A Day in the Life
by Frankyy
Summary: One of Tim's boys started this war with Brumly, and it is going to be up to Tim to end it. Follow Tim throughout the events of Ticket to Ride as the war meets a bloody boiling point and his own relationships with the few people he loves are left in ruins. (Side-fic to Ticket to Ride)
1. Middle

**Author's Note:** There's more to the story of Ticket to Ride than what I'm able to put in from Curly or Katie's perspectives, so here is the first chapter of a small side-fic from the perspectives of Tim and Jodie. This chapter falls in with chapter one of Ticket to Ride.

Please be aware that all familiar characters and locations belong to S.E. Hinton and her book, The Outsiders. The chapter title and lyrics throughout are from DJ Snake's song, Middle. And the title of this fic comes from the song of the same name by The Beatles.

* * *

 _ **Sunday, 8 December 1968**_

 _There you go wishing, floating down our wishing well_

 _It's like I'm always causing problems, causing hell_

This was not the day Tim Shepard had expected when he had woken up to a throbbing headache and the bitter aftertaste of too many white spirits. Things had been tense between his gang and Brumly for months now ever since he had first caught one of Rick Thomas' boys selling shit on Shepard turf. The kid had been left black and blue and there hadn't been any more incidences like it until late October when Brumly started moving further in on their territory in greater numbers.

Tim thought Rick justified himself in his head by thinking that because Tim didn't sell the stuff Rick sold and that the potential buyers on Tim's turf were his for the taking, but it didn't change the fact that it was Tim's land and Tim had a problem with Rick and the junk his gang sold.

Tim had never wanted a war, though. Getting into one would just mess with his gang's business and their ability to move around on Brumly turf freely so long as they weren't causing trouble. So in recent months the Brumly boys who dared step foot onto Shepard turf for income earning purposes had copped a few hits, maybe a cracked rib or two, but it was fair defense and Rick knew it.

Today, though, things had changed completely. It hadn't been Rick who had crossed the line like Tim had always thought would be the case if things ever got to the point that the two gangs could no longer co-exist. One of Tim's boys had gone and shot one of Rick's in the head, and looking back retrospectively Tim only had himself to blame, which just pissed him off even more.

Arnie Barnes had joined the gang around the same time as Curly, having been close buddies with him all through school. He had started dating Tim and Curly's younger sister, Angela, and Tim had pushed them down the aisle together when Arnie knocked her up. It had later turned out to be a false alarm, but their names had already been signed on the dotted lines, and Arnie had gotten locked up not long after.

Arnie had _just_ gotten out and now he was headed back probably for the rest of his life, if he didn't wind up in the electric chair instead. According to Curly's version of the day's events, Angela had spent a night with Mike Harvey while Arnie had been away and Arnie had found out about it the morning after he'd been released. Upon questioning, Angela had claimed that Mike had gotten her drunk and taken advantage.

Tim figured that something must have snapped in Arnie. Nobody knew where he had got his hands on a gun or why he had gone to the extreme measure of shooting Mike, but the damage was done now, and Tim just had to try to clean it up as best he could.

His stupid fucking brother should have stepped up and taken charge of the situation, though, or at least called Tim before going off half-cocked with Arnie to find Mike. He might not have known what Arnie was going to do, but for somebody who complained as much as he did that Pete was Tim's right-hand man and not himself, he should have manned up and given Tim a reason to believe he was growing up, but he was still the same reckless kid.

Tim still didn't know completely what he was supposed to do now or how he was going to deal with the war Rick had promised him in the chaos right after everything had gone down at The Dingo. He had instructed his gang to lay low for now. He didn't want them getting picked up by cops or looking for trouble on Brumly turf, in fact he had told them to steer clear of Brumly land altogether, not wanting to take any chances. He had told them not to go running their mouths or boasting about what had happened, but they still had to defend themselves. Mike had gotten what he'd deserved for messing with another guy's girl – how could he not have known that sleeping with Angela Shepard would land him in hot water?

 _I hope that I can turn back the time_

 _To make it alright, all alright for us_

"I didn't know if you would be in today or not," Jodie King's manager, Linda Perkins, commented as Jodie walked into the salon on Monday morning.

"Hello to you, too," Jodie responded cheekily as she took off her coat and hung it up near the front door. "Why wouldn't I be here?"

Linda shrugged as she organised her hair tools at her work station. "Someone got shot at one of those places you hang out at on the Ribbon; I thought you might've been there."

"What're you talkin' about?" Jodie demanded, spinning around to face Linda. "Who?"

Linda shrugged and nodded her head to the waiting area where the morning's newspaper sat on a coffee table for waiting patrons to read through. "Check the paper." Jodie snatched the paper up and straightened it out to look at the front page. "Mike something or other, I think."

Jodie's gaze landed on a picture of a boy whose skin around his eyes creased from his smile. "Mike Harvey," Jodie said slowly, recognizing him instantly and reading the beginning of the article in search of his involvement.

"Yeah, that's it," Linda responded, still ordering her things. "Sad stuff when someone that young dies. He was still a kid, really."

Jodie looked over the newspaper at Linda, who was now turning away from her workstation to face Jodie, the bulge of her pregnant stomach more evident today than in recent weeks.

"I knew him," Jodie told Linda, her voice breathy with disbelief.

Mike had been Jodie's ex-boyfriend's best buddy. They had been friends since before Jodie and Rick had met over four years ago, and Mike had always been in the background of the memories Jodie had shared with Rick. It was surreal and too big of a pill to swallow to think that somebody who had just always been there was gone.

"Oh, honey," Linda said, giving Jodie a concerned look. "Well?"

"He was Rick's best friend," Jodie said, wondering if Rick had been there and how he was handling it. Maybe he didn't even know yet, she thought before deeming it unlikely – wherever Mike was Rick was sure to be around somewhere, too, and vice versa.

"Who did it?" Jodie asked, looking back down at the newspaper. "And why?"

"It was a gang thing apparently," Linda explained as Jodie's eyes landed on Arnie Barnes' name.

She had heard his name before; he was infamous for his shotgun wedding to Angela Shepard and getting himself locked up not long after. He ran with Tim Shepard's crew and had been buddies with Tim's younger brother, Curly. That's all she knew about him, but it was enough to surmise that something had blown up between Rick and Tim's gangs. Rick had been holding a grudge against Tim for years and something in Jodie's gut told her that their problem with each other was now bigger than just her. Rick's best friend was dead and Tim's gang was to blame.

"Maybe you should've stayed home," Linda spoke again, her words slow and cautious. "You look a little pale."

Jodie looked back up from the paper and nodded her agreement with Linda. "Yeah, I don't feel so great," Jodie said as she turned to grab her coat and pull it back on. "Do you mind?"

Linda waved Jodie off nonchalantly and Jodie walked back out of the salon in somewhat of a daze. She didn't realize she was headed for the bus stop until she had been standing there for ten minutes and a bus was pulling up in front of her. With shaking hands she paid the fee and got on, riding it for the half hour it took to get out of the downtown area and onto Brumly territory. She got off at the stop closest to Rick's place, but when she got to his house his car wasn't parked out the front, so she walked another twenty minutes to Dennis McKay's house.

Dennis lived with a couple of other boys in the gang and Rick preferred using Dennis' house as a meeting place of sorts for his gang rather than the living room he shared with his mom and younger sister. Jodie was relieved to see Rick's car parked out on the curb as she approached, glad that she didn't have to walk on to the next likely place in the chilly air outside.

"Woah, you are not who I was expecting," Phil Black laughed when he opened the door to see Jodie on his doorstep. His brown eyes were heavily lidded and bloodshot and Jodie could smell smoke from something that wasn't a cigarette coming from inside the house.

"Rick's here, right?" Jodie asked, pointing her thumb back at where Rick's car was parked.

"Yeah," was all Phil said in answer.

"Can I see him?" Jodie persisted when it was clear Phil was just going to stand in the doorway like a stunned mullet unless she did something.

Phil glanced around the front door at something Jodie couldn't see before starting to move back into the house. Jodie thought he was going to close the door and leave her standing out in the cold, but he was quickly replaced by Rick, who nodded his head in beckoning for her to follow him through the living room and into the kitchen. The smell of grass hit her over the head as she walked through the living room, giving a few of the boys in there a small wave.

"What's goin' on?" Rick asked when they were alone, jumping up onto the counter to sit.

Jodie stood in front of him and looked him over a couple of times. His hair was messy and his hazel eyes were bloodshot like Phil's. The corners of his lips seemed like something was tugging them down, and Jodie didn't like the sadness that washed over her because of it – he looked so much better when he was smiling.

"I saw the newspaper," she said quietly as she stepped forward to sit up on the counter beside him.

"I didn't," Rick responded, bored. "Was there anythin' good in there?"

"Mike made the front page," she answered him, wishing he would look at her instead of the floor. He was too closed off like this and she didn't like not being able to read him. "I would've been here sooner if I'd known."

"Why?" Rick asked with a tired sigh. "You ain't my girl anymore."

Jodie had broken things off with him about a month before after one too many nasty fights, but this was what they did every time. They cooled things off for a little while, long enough for the problem to wear off or be forgotten about, and then they crashed back into each other like magnets.

"I've loved you off and on for years," she said honestly with a small, awkward laugh, "I don't know if it's possible for me to stop caring completely."

He finally looked at her with his eyebrows drawn close, the pain of his thoughts evident on his face. "Shepard did this."

"Are you sure?" Jodie asked.

Dread stirred in her stomach every time Tim came up in conversation with or around Rick. Their dislike for each other had stemmed from Jodie back in high school and what she had done was something that Rick had never forgotten despite Jodie's insistence that Rick was the one she wanted.

"Arnie was mad over Mike sleepin' with Angela while he was locked up," Rick explained, bitterness dripping from his words. "Don't tell me Tim wasn't pissed about it, too, or that he didn't give Arnie the okay to do what he did. Nothin' happens in that gang without Tim's tick of approval."

Jodie wanted to tell him that she didn't think Tim would be okay with one of his boys murdering somebody, whether that somebody be from Brumly or not, but didn't want Rick to think she was taking sides like he probably would.

"Gang problems aren't meant to come up because of girls," Jodie said, not sure why she felt the need to defend a girl four years her junior.

"They do, though," Rick said, giving Jodie a cutting look like she was stupid for not already knowing it.

"Were you there?" Jodie asked, wanting to move the topic of discussion away from where Rick was taking it – the past.

"Yeah," he nodded, "not that it mattered. Shepard's brother punched Mike from behind and while I was trying to deal with that Arnie pulled out the gun. I was wastin' my breath on the wrong dipshit."

Rick took a deep, controlled breath and glared up at the roof. Jodie saw how difficult it was for him to grasp one specific emotion as they all blurred into one inside him. He was angry, upset, and grieving. He was feeling guilty and defensive and vengeful. And all of that mixed together scared the hell out of Jodie.

"I'm sorry," she said, her voice small and unsure.

She inched closer to Rick and rested her head on his shoulder, hoping that she would be enough to get him through this. When he wrapped an arm around her shoulder, she thought that maybe she might.

 _Lying down beside you, what's going through your head?_

 _The silence in the air felt like my soul froze_

Tim had only had the house to himself for an hour the next day when Curly walked back through the front door, Glenn and Dale trailing behind him this time. Tim rolled his eyes from where he sat in an armchair, still trying to wake up from his sleep in.

"What happened now?" he asked as his eyes assessed Dale's bloody nose and bruising right eye.

"Jeff Griffiths jumped him before school even started," Curly responded, sitting down in the other free armchair as Glenn went off in search of something frozen from the kitchen and Dale perched on the coffee table so as not to get any of the furniture bloody.

"How does he look?" Tim asked, looking at Dale now.

"Worse if it hadn't gotten broken up so quick," Dale grumbled with a shrug of his shoulders.

Tim's lips twitched irritably. Curly and his dumb buddies couldn't even make it more than twenty-four hours without causing even more trouble than they'd already created.

"Christ," Tim cussed, "I tell you boys to keep your heads down and you go gettin' into fights less than a day later. Do you ever actually listen to anything I fuckin' say?"

"He came at _me_!" Dale shot back. "I didn't even see him comin' til he'd already hit me. I didn't fuckin' start anything!"

"It's true," Curly defended his buddy. "Dale and Jeff ain't ever exactly liked each other, but Dale didn't go lookin' for this fight. Jeff jumped him."

Tim vaguely remembered that Dale and Jeff Griffiths hadn't liked each other before the problem with Arnie shooting Mike happened yesterday. Something about Jeff sliming around with Dale's girlfriend while they were on some kind of break.

Glenn returned to the lounge room with a frozen bag of vegetables and chucked them at Dale to catch and ice his face with. Silence fell between the four boys as Glenn, wary of the tension in the atmosphere, took a seat on the couch and Tim lit up a cigarette and puffed away at it eagerly to calm his temper.

He supposed it couldn't be helped if Jeff's attack had come out of nowhere and Dale truly hadn't instigated something. He thought the reason it still bugged him, though, was that these three boys always seemed to be the ones causing him headaches.

"I get y'all weren't responsible _this_ time," Tim said, trying to keep his tone even and reasonable, "but every time there's a god damned problem, you three seem to be involved one way or another."

"But –" Curly began.

"Shut it," Tim barked, pointing his cigarette at Curly authoritatively. "Just keep yourselves out of fuckin' trouble, okay? I don't care if it means y'all have to stay inside and have no life outside of home and school, I don't wanna know you've been causin' any more trouble that this gang can't afford right now." Tim stared each boy down before adding, "I ain't gonna keep someone around if they ain't benefittin' the gang. Got it?"

Curly, Dale and Glenn all nodded their understanding in silence and Tim felt no need to hang around and make nice with them. He had plans to meet up with Pete soon anyway, so he decided to get to Pete's place a little early and got up and left the house. He hoped his brother and his buddies would pull their heads in real soon. As much as Tim hoped otherwise, he could see his problems multiplying over the next few months and hoped to God that Curly, Dale and Glenn wouldn't be causing him more problems than necessary.

 _Am I just overthinking feelings I conceal_

 _This gut feeling I'm tryna get off me as well_


	2. Let It Go

**Author's Note:** This chapter takes place around the time of chapter two and three of Ticket to Ride.

Please be aware that all familiar characters and locations belong to S.E. Hinton and her book, The Outsiders. The chapter title and lyrics throughout are from James Bay's song, Let It Go. And the title of this fic comes from the song of the same name by The Beatles.

* * *

 _ **Wednesday, 18 December 1968**_

 _From nervous touch and getting drunk_

 _To staying up and waking up with you_

Jodie had gone to the funeral on Sunday and the moment her eyes found Rick they had involuntarily begun searching for Mike somewhere close by. The air was stolen from her lungs in the moment that she realized Mike wasn't chatting away to anybody nearby but lying dead inside a coffin instead. She was there for his funeral, she knew that in her mind, but it seemed that her sub-conscious hadn't accepted it just yet. All the afternoons she had spent bowling with Rick, Mike and whatever floozy he was dating at the time flashed before her eyes, along with all the parties she had knocked beers with him in cheers at. There had been so many that the lines of the memories had all blurred over the years, but she found herself aching for just another ordinary moment with him, purely because she knew now that she would never get another one again.

The dreadful feeling that everything was about to change had plagued her for the entire week after Mike died, only for her to realize on the day of his funeral that everything already had changed. And though his death didn't strike her core as drastically as it surely was doing for Rick, she knew her life would be changed by this, too, because Rick was part of her life, and his was crashing down around him.

Rick had retreated back home after the funeral with his gang and Jodie had left with her brothers, choosing to leave Rick to mourn with those who felt the loss more than she, but before she left he had asked her if they could hang out on Wednesday night. And now it was Wednesday and Jodie was finally home from work after spending her day mildly giddy and apprehensive.

Despite the fact that she knew there was a pattern to her relationship with Rick, she couldn't help but hope that things would be different this time. For so long the arguments between them had gone around and around in a circle, never coming to any kind of conclusion or resolution, and despite the circumstances she hoped that by sticking by Rick in his hour of need he would finally see that her loyalties laid with him. She knew it might be tough going, though, because a fresh problem had arisen between Rick and Tim Shepard, and in Rick's mind the problems with the Shepard gang always came back to Jodie.

Rick picked her up half an hour after she had arrived home with her brother, Troy, who had picked her up from work, and Troy waved her out of the house with a cheeky grin and wriggling eyebrows.

He took her to Jay's. It wasn't the most romantic venue in the world, but Rick never put much effort into wooing Jodie. She suspected he knew how easy it would be to get her back.

When she asked him about his week his responses were cryptic and somewhat dramatic, alluding to gang related things that she couldn't know anything about because she wasn't in his gang and also because her brothers ran the show with the River Kings. So instead she told him about a new hairstyle she had learnt at work and about the party he had missed last Friday.

People he knew kept coming up to their table to chat with him or pass on their condolences, and after he got rid of the fifth person he pushed his cold burger away from him.

"I need a smoke," Rick huffed, obviously as annoyed by the interruptions as Jodie was.

Jodie, who had finished her food anyway in the time he had spent ignoring her and talking to other people, got up and followed him outside. It was cold out and she pulled her coat tighter around herself as she lent against the wall out the front of Jay's. They were a little to the side of the main entrance, and the light didn't quite reach them completely, hiding them away in the shadows instead.

She watched him smoke his cigarette, finding a beauty in the way the end of the cigarette burning slightly illuminated his face. His eyelashes made shadows under his eyes, or were they bags? She wouldn't have been surprised if he hadn't slept well lately – from what she had heard around Tulsa in the past week or so that day at The Dingo had been awfully bloody and grim.

"What's goin' through your head?" she asked him once the silence finally got to her.

"More shit than I can list," Rick said with a small, dry laugh.

"What's at the top of it?" Jodie asked, trying to narrow it down and get to the root of at least one thing clouding his thoughts.

"Shepard," Rick responded before taking another drag of his cigarette.

"What about him?" Jodie asked cautiously, dreading the argument that usually came up when Tim Shepard was a topic of conversation.

"What do you think?" Rick scoffed. "He shot my best friend."

Jodie furrowed her eyebrows, feeling the need to correct him though she was sure he knew anyway. "That was Arnie Barnes," Jodie told him slowly.

"Same thing," Rick said with a wave of his hand. "It doesn't matter who pulled the trigger, just that they were a Shepard. A stupid Shepard at that," he added with a smirk and a disbelieving shake of his head. "They have no idea how bad they fucked up."

"What're you gonna do?" she asked, not liking the dangerous glint in his hazel eyes when the end of his cigarette next lit them up.

Rick blew the smoke out coolly and shrugged. "Make 'em regret it, that's for sure."

She knew she was treading on treacherous ground, but the words were out of her mouth before she could filter and decide against them.

"Are you sure that's the best thing for you to be doin'?" she asked, analyzing Rick's mood worriedly before rushing to explain her train of thought. "It just seems like alot of trouble when you already have so much."

Rick barked a short laugh into the night, his smile scarily white in the darkness. "Seems like you're lookin' for trouble by defendin' them right now."

"I'm not defendin' anybody," Jodie shot back. "I'm tryin' to look out for you and I don't see how putting yourself under extra stress is gonna help you get through this."

"Well I disagree," Rick said with an air of finality as he flicked his finished cigarette to the ground and looked at her. "I ain't lettin' Mike die for no reason."

Jodie had hoped to avoid an argument tonight and so she bit her tongue and decided not to continue disagreeing with him. She had voiced her concern and he had shot it down. She wanted to believe that he knew what was better for him than she did.

Even if she had wanted to protest, though, it would have gone out the window a moment later when he stepped closer to her. She never thought of him as particularly tall or herself as particularly short, but when he stood so close to her she found herself feeling so small in contrast.

He glanced over at the entrance to Jay's and then back at her. "What do ya think?" he asked, all traces of anything sinister gone from his voice now. "Should we just go back to my place?"

She looked up into his eyes, soft and teasing, and then glanced down at his parted lips. She knew how they would taste, but that didn't stop the desire building up in her to kiss him anyway. It went against all her adamant announcements last month when they had broken up that she would never waste her time on him again, but she told herself it was different this time to every other time before. _He_ was different, and he needed her help as much as she needed to make sure he was going to be alright.

"Yeah," she breathed, the air of her voice spiraling before her in the cold night.

With a knowing grin, he took her hand and led her back to the beginning.

 _All this delusion in our heads_

 _Is gonna bring us to our knees_

"We ain't likely to have to pick y'all up from the cooler tomorrow, are we?" Pete asked Curly, Dale and Glenn from where he sat in the passenger seat of Tim's car as Tim drove them to a party in a nicer part of the city than what he and his gang lived in.

It was Friday night and that day had marked the last day of school before the Christmas break for Tim's younger siblings and the younger members of his gang. Some kid they went to school with was throwing a party and Tim did not have a good feeling about it, but knew his brother would end up there with or without Tim's help.

"Not unless Griffiths wants to fuck with me again," Dale muttered darkly and Tim glared at him in the rear-view mirror.

"Terry already made us and Brumly agree not to go causin' any trouble at his place," Glenn spoke up in an attempt to smooth things over and instill more confidence in Tim that he wouldn't end up with a bigger mess to clean.

"You better not," Tim said as he pulled up out the front of this Terry kid's house.

The house, which already had a couple of cars parked in its driveway, was bigger and nicer than what Tim was used to. His lips curled up at it in distaste as Curly, Dale and Glenn climbed out of his car.

"Ten bucks says they're locked up by midnight," Pete wagered as Tim pulled the car away from the curb and started toward Buck's.

"I say eleven-thirty," Tim smirked at his buddy and true to his bet it was quarter to twelve when the leader of the Tiber Street Tigers, Billy Prause, staggered over to Tim's table, where Tim had a cute little blonde eating out of the palm of his hand, to announce that his boys had been hauled in about half an hour ago for getting involved in a Shepard fight.

"Cough up," Tim told Pete, who rolled his eyes and flipped Tim the bird, before looking at Billy again. "You know much else 'bout what happened?"

"One of your boys got into it with one of Brumly's," Billy said with a shrug, a burning cigarette held expertly between his lips as he spoke. "River Kings got involved and my boys took pity on yours bein' outnumbered and all."

Tim tipped his beer to Billy and swallowed a little bit of pride before saying, "It won't be forgotten."

Billy shrugged again. "Thomas will be dead within a year, probably by his own hand. If I'm gonna be on anyone's side it's gonna be the winnin' one."

Tim watched Billy turn and disappear into the crowd again, mulling over his words. The prediction was a pretty serious one, but one that Tim didn't think was too unbelievable nonetheless. Fuck, if Pete had been shot by one of Brumly's boys Tim would probably be out for blood, too, regardless of whether it was deserved or not. He almost pitied Rick for his loss, but before he let himself go that far he turned his attention back to the blonde girl sitting next to him who'd gone quiet when Billy had approached.

What was her name again? Linda... Belinda? He chose to call her _Dollface_ instead, it was endearing and it didn't let on that he didn't have a clue what her damn name was. He wasn't concerned with getting to know her; he just wanted to get her upstairs, which he did after another beer and a half hour of persuasion.

 _When we're becoming something else_

 _I think it's time to walk away_

Tim rolled out of bed late the next morning despite the pounding in his skull and the girl still snoring softly beside him. He'd thought about waking her up for another round before he left, but he didn't want to have to go through the awkward bullshit of exchanging numbers and saying he'd call when he wouldn't. So he pulled his pants on and left her alone in one of the small, dark rooms that Buck rented out for a cheap dime.

Tim couldn't remember what had happened to Pete, but didn't want to disturb him if he was sleeping off his own hangover in one of the rooms upstairs. He figured he should probably deal with his dickhead brother and buddies himself anyway.

There wasn't any sign of Curly, Dale or Glenn when Tim parked up out the front of the police station, and he decided to light a cigarette and wait ten minutes. Any longer and they could find their own way home – Tim's patience only lasted so long and he was just about through with these boys. They came walking out of the station a minute later, though, looking like they'd been in a punch up, just like Billy had said.

"Big night," Tim commented once the boys, who had spotted him and started off in his direction, were within earshot. He took another drag of his cigarette before flicking it onto the asphalt of the parking lot. "So what happened?"

Curly and Glenn turned their heads to look at Dale, who scowled back at them and buried his hands in his jeans pockets with a reluctant shrug of his shoulders. "One of Rick's boys spent most of the night talkin' up my girl. There's only so long I can sit and watch that without actin'."

Tim glared at Dale and if he wasn't so damn tired himself he'd have smacked him upside the head right then and there. He knew it would have to happen, though. Dale had completely gone against Tim's instructions to keep his nose clean.

"Your girl," Tim spoke, letting his tongue roll the words out slowly. It always came down to a fucking girl. "What was she doin' talkin' to Brumly?"

"She's friends with Katie," Dale answered and when Tim gave him a who-the-fuck-is-that look he added, "Rick's kid sister."

Right. That was her name. He remembered Rick dragging her along with him the day Arnie had shot Mike and all hell had broken loose.

"Doesn't sound like she's that great a girl if she's lettin' Brumly sweet talk her, in front of her boyfriend or not," Tim reasoned before deciding he would leave that conversation there until Curly and Glenn weren't around. "I heard y'all weren't the only ones involved?"

"Things got crazy pretty quick," Glenn explained. "Once Curly and I got involved the River Kings jumped in, but a few of the Tigers helped us out."

"Good," Tim nodded as the Tigers in question came walking out of the front doors of the cop shop. One of them – the wise-ass, Craig Chambers, Tim recalled – nodded acknowledgement at Tim and his boys and they all nodded back their appreciation. "Well I got shit to do so get in," Tim said before walking around to the driver's door of his car and opening it. "And don't go thinkin' I'm happy about this cause I ain't, but I also ain't gonna leave you here stranded and waiting for Brumly to get out and kick off round two."

The three boys hurried to climb into the car and Tim, one by one, dropped the boys home until the only one left was Dale. Curly had given Dale a sympathetic look as he had climbed out of the car at his and Tim's residence. He must've known Dale was going to cop it; otherwise Tim would've just dropped him off and then taken himself and Curly home last. Dale must've known it, too, because the mood of the car became tense once he was alone with Tim, and Tim let the apprehension build for the whole drive until he was pulling up on the curb out the front of Dale's house.

Tim got out of the car and left the engine running as he walked around to the side Dale was getting out of. Dale closed the passenger door behind him and looked up at Tim, his apology evident on his face before he spoke it.

"I'm real sorry, Tim," Dale said, all signs of defensiveness gone now they were alone. "I just couldn't let that smug prick keep talkin' to my girl like that, you know how it is."

"Yeah," Tim agreed, though he didn't know how it was at all.

He feigned a step back, almost like he was gonna let Dale off the hook this time, but at the last moment he swung his foot forward again and curled his arm around to punch Dale square in the cheek. Dale stumbled back into the side of the car and caught himself on the side-mirror, his hand clutching the cheek that would soon be bruised like his other one.

"I'm runnin' a _gang_ , though," Tim spat as he shook his fist out, "and each time you cause problems for me 'cause your girl can't pick a boyfriend and stick to him I'm gonna take my problem out on you." Tim moved back around to the driver's side and opened the door back up. "Sort your shit out, Dale," he said as Dale righted himself and backed away from Tim's car.

Tim got in and put the car back into gear before speeding away from Dale's house. The kid was lucky all he'd gotten was a punch in the head. Tim shook his own head as he drove, pissed off that he always let these boys get off lighter than he should have. But the fight breaking out last night had benefited Tim in a way. It had drawn a line in the sand and the River Kings and Tigers had wound up picking sides whether they had wanted to or not.

Tim just hoped Billy would end up being right. His was going to be the winning side. It had to be.

 _Trying to push this problem up the hill_

 _When it's just too heavy to hold_

 _Think now's the time to let it slide_


	3. Ride

**Author's Note:** This chapter matches up to chapter four of Ticket to Ride (:

Please be aware that all familiar characters and locations belong to S.E. Hinton and her book, The Outsiders. The chapter title and lyrics throughout are from Twenty One Pilots' song, Ride. And the title of this fic comes from the song of the same name by The Beatles.

* * *

 _ **Monday, 23 December 1968**_

 _"I'd die for you," that's easy to say_

 _We have a list of people that we would take_

 _A bullet for them, a bullet for you, a bullet for everybody in this room_

"He's not even a member, man," Dale said to Tim as he paced back and forth in Tim's small front yard. "He's a fuckin' kid."

 _He_ was Dale's kid brother, Tommy, who had been jumped the night before by a few Brumly boys according to Dale. It had happened on Tim's turf to someone who was probably a little shithead like Curly had been at the same age, and still was alot of the time, but who shouldn't have been brought into this shit between Rick's gang and Tim's.

"I know, I know," Tim said, lighting up a cigarette and attempting to think through what the fuck he was going to do about this. "You think they were gunnin' for him?"

"To send a message," Dale said, stopping dead in his tracks to look Tim in his dark blue eyes. The bruise Tim had given him a couple of days before had come up nice and dark, and it dawned on Tim that the bruise wasn't the only punishment Dale had copped for starting that fight with one of Rick's boys at that stupid end of semester high school party. He could now add getting his brother beaten black and blue to the list, too. "Yeah, I really fuckin' do."

Tim broke eye contact first, focusing on taking a few more puffs of his cigarette as the gravity of the gang situation settled down to stay around Dale, Tim and Curly, who was sitting on the front porch steps listening to it all.

Tim supposed he couldn't really call it a gang _situation_ anymore. Rick had declared war and he obviously meant it. Bashing Dale's brother, whether they meant the jumping for Tommy or just got lucky, on Shepard turf was an act of war. Tim had been stupid to think it might blow over.

"Round up the boys and tell 'em to meet at Pete's tonight at six," Tim finally said, chucking his cigarette butt on the grass and grinding it out with his boot. "I'll see ya tonight," he added before taking off toward his car.

Just before Dale had turned up on Tim's doorstep Pete had rung the house to let Tim know that he was at Buck's having a beer with a few of their guys and that Rick and a few of his own boys had just arrived, too. That was as close to believing in fate as Tim would get and he revved himself up on the drive over there.

Tim didn't know which Brumly boys it had been to beat Dale's younger brother up or if Rick had been involved personally, but he didn't care. Rick was about to be personally involved in this problem, he'd been fucking asking to be as far as Tim was concerned. He had given the order for his boys to come onto Tim's land. He had given the order for them to belt the living daylights out of a fourteen year old _kid_ , who had turned out to be the brother of one of Tim's boys. It had made Tim look weak in light of his previous orders to try and steer clear of problems with the Brumly Gang. And Tim Shepard was anything but weak.

Tim was hot with fury by the time he barged in through Buck's front door and made a beeline for where Rick stood leaning against the bar with a few of his buddies circled around, laughing at something Tim could guarantee was stupid. Rick didn't notice Tim approaching until Tim already had him pushed further up against the bar, his hands gripping the front of Rick's shirt tightly.

"What the fuck do you think you're doin' –" Tim started at the same time that Rick said the same thing, but meaning something different, and pushed Tim back a couple of steps.

Rick's buddies crowded in closer, standing up straight and puffing their chests out in an attempt to look tough and menacing, but Tim wasn't bothered. Pete, Andrew, Tony and Roger were already up and at Tim's back, evening out the numbers.

"I've been tryin' to let you calm down and see it ain't a smart idea for anyone to be startin' a war," Tim seethed at Rick, who was glaring back at him with just as much animosity, "but I'm drawin' a line at you comin' onto my turf and knockin' a fuckin' kid around, you piece of shit."

"I ain't the piece of shit here," Rick said with a hard, scathing laugh, "I could've put a bullet in his head. An eye for an eye, right? Maybe I will next time."

And that was exactly why Tim hadn't just come in with a punch to start off with. He'd given Rick the chance to admit to jumping Tommy in front of Tim's guys, and he had made the admission even better by threatening to kill the kid next time.

 _Next time_... There wasn't going to be a next time if Tim had anything to do with it, and he had, he very quickly decided, _everything_ to do with it.

Tim lunged at Rick again and his hands caught Rick around the throat, bending him back over the top of the bar. A couple of Rick's guys took a few steps back to give them room and Tim's boys prepared themselves to jump in should any of Rick's decide to turn the one-on-one fight into a rumble.

Rick punched Tim in the gut and Tim's grip loosened enough for Rick to push himself back up, sending Tim stumbling back a couple of steps to catch his breath. The two boys gasped for air for a hair of a second and then went at each other again as Buck walked into the bar area with a baseball bat in hand, yelling at them to cut it out.

Rick threw another punch at Tim's head, which Tim blocked with his left arm as he swung his right arm forward to connect his fist with Rick's jaw. If Rick's jaw hadn't been clenched it would have snapped right off, but the impact was still enough to knock him down in front of the bar.

"That's enough!" Buck bellowed as he came round to the other side of the bar and pointed his baseball bat from Tim to Rick and back to Tim. "Y'all can cave each other's skulls in for all I care, but you ain't doin' it here!"

Tim rolled his eyes at Buck. Buck was smaller than him and Tim knew he wasn't much of a scrapper. He could rip that baseball bat out of his hand and cave _his_ skull in if he really wanted to, but he had already made the point he had come to Buck's to make.

"Stay the fuck off my turf, Thomas," Tim growled and made sure to glare at each of his boys in turn before stalking off out of Buck's place, his own boys hot on his heels.

Pete tossed Andrew his car keys once they were outside, and Andrew, Tony and Roger left them to get into Pete's car and follow Tim and Pete back to Pete's place. Tim's car was silent for a few minutes until Pete finally said something.

"You hear The Dingo burnt down?" he asked conversationally.

"No and I don't fuckin' care," Tim responded tightly as he drove.

"Alright," Pete responded, raising his hands innocently. "So what was all that about then? Who got jumped?"

"Dale's brother, Tommy," Tim answered, glancing down at the knuckles on his right hand. They were going to bruise for sure. "Beat him within an inch of his life."

"Fuck," was all Pete said and silence fell between them for a couple of minutes before he spoke again. "This ain't good, Tim."

"No, it's fuckin' dandy."

"You heard him in there," Pete said, turning in his seat to face Tim properly. "He'll kill someone if we keep pushin' him."

"I haven't even begun to push him."

"Tim –"

"What the fuck am I supposed to do?!" Tim erupted at him. "He came onto our turf and beat the shit out of one of one of our boys' brothers, _on our turf_ ," he reiterated again to make sure Pete got it through his head. "He's been movin' his shit on our land since before Mike was shot, and we might as well not be a fuckin' gang at all if we're gonna stand back and let him have at it with our land and our people."

They were damned if they did and they were damned if they didn't, and Pete must have realised that because he turned back to the front of the car and didn't say another word for the rest of the drive back to his place.

When they arrived Tim smoked a few cigarettes to calm himself down as he debriefed the boys that had followed them back on what had happened with Tommy. They drank beers until the rest of the gang arrived and it was time for Tim to set the wheels in motion.

"They're comin' onto our turf now," he told them, his voice loud and powerful against the silent living room, "and not just to sell their shit once in a blue moon. They're coming into our territory and seekin' out us and our own, and we ain't gonna stand for that." He looked around the room at the faces of his gang; the eyes of each person alight with malevolence. "One step over the boundary and you jump on them. One word out of line and you kick 'em back into place, you hear? But watch your backs 'cause they're obviously gunnin' for us and they're gonna be even more so soon enough."

The group of boys of varying ages nodded their heads in agreement and anticipation, and Tim worked hard to bury the foreboding feeling in his stomach that things were about to get far more out of control than this.

 _But I don't seem to see many bullets coming through_

 _Metaphorically, I'm the man_

 _But literally, I don't know what I'd do_

The last skerrick of hope Jodie had held onto that Rick might change his mind and join her for new years eve went out the door when his little sister walked through it. Jodie was at Buck's and Rick was at one of his boys' houses, having a stupid gang-only new years celebration. Never mind that the whole point of new years eve was to ring in the new year with a kiss. A kiss from your girlfriend or boyfriend, preferably, but how was that supposed to happen if they were at two completely different parties?

It didn't make her feel much better that their separation tonight of all nights was Rick's decision. She would be at his party with him if he'd let her, but he and his gang wanted to keep it a boys only thing apparently. Who were they going to kiss? Each other?

Of course, it wasn't so much a party or a celebration of any kind. It was going to be like a second funeral for Mike, ringing in a new year without their second-in-charge. She understood they were grieving, but why make a big deal of Mike not being there? He was gone. They all knew that. It made no sense to dwell on it and turn what could be a fun and happy occasion into a depressing one.

If that was the way Rick was going to look at the night then Jodie decided she didn't want a bar of him anyway. She wanted to enjoy herself, not be brought down by Rick the Buzz Kill, and enjoy herself she did.

By the time Rick's younger sister, Katie, arrived, Jodie had downed six beers and a quarter of a bottle of rum and was well and truly on her way to a killer hangover. Rick might not have walked in with Katie, but at least Jodie wasn't alone in wanting to have a bit of fun tonight.

"Hey," Jodie said when she was close enough for Katie to hear her, "I take it your brother ain't with you?" she asked, even though she knew the answer already.

"No, he's hanging out with just the guys tonight," Katie said with a shake of her head.

"Yeah, yeah," Jodie said with a roll of her eyes. "Grieving and all that," she continued, vaguely aware that she sounded incredibly dismissive, but not giving a shit anyway. "Here, drink."

Katie glanced down at the bottle of rum Jodie had extended to her and held up her own beer for Jodie to see. "I'm fine, thanks."

"No, you're not," Jodie insisted, seeing clear as day how uncomfortable Katie felt while everything else around Jodie swam, "and if you're anything like your brother you're gonna need some of this, so drink." Katie glanced uncertainly at the bottle of rum again. "Relax, I'm not gonna poison you, little sister," Jodie said as she pushed the bottle into Katie's free hand and removed the beer from her other hand.

Katie seemed to consider the bottle of rum a moment longer before bringing the open bottle to her lips and tipping her head back to pour a mouthful down her throat. Jodie wore a triumphant grin as she watched her boyfriend's little sister down a generous amount of rum, but the grin was wiped a second later when Jodie caught sight of somebody over Katie's shoulder.

It was Tim Shepard, and she couldn't remember the last time she had spoken to him, but she did remember that Rick had a bruise the size of Texas along his jaw thanks to him, and that pissed her off.

Jodie's attention was pulled back to Katie when Katie held the bottle of rum out for her to take back, a bitter look on her face from the taste of it. "Hold onto it for me," Jodie said absently with a shake of her head before putting Katie's beer down on the bar and moving past Katie to zero in on Tim again.

Something at the back of her mind told her it wasn't a good idea to approach him, but she had drunk enough to ignore it as she pushed through the crowd of people and made a beeline for him, where he stood talking to Wendy Ruscoe in a corner of the room.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" Jodie demanded, planting herself next to Wendy so she could face Tim and drowning out whatever Wendy had been saying to Tim.

Tim looked Jodie up and down and gave her an annoyed smirk, but a smirk nonetheless. He didn't know what he had done to rile her up, but he hadn't seen her in a while and she had always been the most fun to mess with when she was pissed off.

"I could ask you the same thing," Tim responded before lifting his beer to his lips and gulping down a mouthful.

"Could you give us a minute, Wendy?" Jodie asked, in an overly sweet and completely bitchy tone.

Wendy! That was the girl's name. Tim had been a long way off on thinking it was Linda. He really should have paid more attention to the poor girl's name, especially when he'd slept with her a week and a half ago, but she was too nice and boring for him to bother making that much effort.

Wendy gave a small nod and disappeared into the throng of people waiting for a drink at the bar, and Jodie took her spot in the corner with Tim.

"Is it really not enough for you that you had his best buddy killed?" Jodie started in on Tim as he took another amused sip of his beer. "Do you really have to keep twisting the knife?"

Tim shook his head and said, "I still don't know what the fuck you're talkin' about."

"Do I have to spell it out for you?" Jodie asked, pronouncing her words slowly for his thick head to understand. "You had Angela's guy shoot Mike," she said, holding one finger up for him, "you attacked Rick here the other day and just about broke his jaw," another finger went up, "and you and your hoods jumped a couple of Rick's boys the other night," she lifted a third finger up.

Tim let out a bark of laughter and pushed the side of his body away from the wall on his right and took a step closer to Jodie, which caused her to back up a little into the wall behind her.

"First off," he said, leaning down closer to her, "I didn't know anything about Mike being shot til after he was already dead, but that's the risk he ran when he took advantage of another guy's girl." Jodie opened her mouth to argue, but Tim held up a finger and then extended a second one. "Secondly, I almost broke your guy's jaw because he came onto _my_ turf and beat the living shit out of one of my boys' kid brothers." Jodie's eyebrows furrowed at that one and Tim suspected Rick had conveniently left that part out when he had told her about their fight. "And third," he extended a third finger like Jodie had a minute before, "we jumped those two idiots because they were sellin' trips, and guess where – on my turf, _again_." Jodie looked at him, dumbstruck. "Really, Jodie, I'm fuckin' hurt," he continued, holding his three fingers to his heart mockingly, "that you really think I'm such a monster I'd go around killin' and jumpin' people for no good reason."

Jodie's shock quickly turned into a suspicious glare. "Don't you lie to me," she said, trying to hide the doubt in her voice. "Everyone's sayin' Mike died 'cause you gave the green light, and I don't care what he did, he didn't deserve a bullet in the head."

"Whatever, believe what you want," he said, shaking his head. This girl was fucking nuts. "But can you believe it somewhere else? I'd like to get back to Linda."

Jodie quirked an eyebrow at him and glanced in the general direction that Wendy had disappeared in. "Do you mean Wendy?" she asked with a laugh and he gritted his teeth in response, kicking himself for forgetting the girl's name so quickly. Jodie gave a small snort and flicked her long, dark brown hair over her shoulder as she said, "You never were one for blondes."

With that one comment the tension between them disappeared and Jodie remembered why she was here; to get drunk and have fun to spite Rick and his stupid boys' night.

"Yeah, but they sure ain't as much trouble as brunettes," Tim said with another smirk, wondering if she had meant to make a point of flicking her brown hair like that.

It had been four years since they had gone round together for a few months. He had enjoyed tormenting her to the day it ended, but she had gotten sick of it. He didn't know how her relationship with Rick was any different since they were always breaking up and getting back together again, but he figured she must have had proper feelings for Rick and not for him. It didn't bother him, though. He had enjoyed it while it lasted, but it was no skin off his chin when it didn't last. There was no shortage of people to antagonise in Tim's life, but every now and then, when she and Rick were on a break, Jodie wandered back in to remind herself why she had chosen to call it off with Tim and run back to Rick just weeks later, and Tim was usually happy to jog her memory.

"Rick and I are back together," Jodie said, Tim's words having sobered her momentarily.

She had heard his tone match the teasing in her own, but was aware that perhaps now wasn't the best time to cause the kind of trouble Tim was referring to when Rick was in such a bad place. She wanted to have fun to spite Rick tonight, but thought against taking it that far.

"That hasn't stopped you before," Tim said, taking another step closer so that they were only mere inches apart.

Jodie held an authorative hand up against Tim's chest, she didn't want him coming any closer otherwise the drink would overpower her again and she truly would do something stupid.

"This time's different," she told him, vaguely recalling saying the same thing before. She thought Tim must remember, too, because he rolled his eyes at her. "I mean it," she said, stepping to the side and away from Tim.

She turned her back on him and returned to the bar, where her brother, Troy, was finishing a dance with Rick's little sister. He poked her in the side with his finger when he found her waiting for another drink and handed her his own beer. It was half full and she drank most of it back so that only a sip was left for Troy when she held it out for him. He gave her a dirty look before drinking the rest.

"You and Shepard, huh?" he asked, nodding his head to where Tim had returned to Wendy, who was a little pissed off if the hand on her hip was anything to go by.

It gave Jodie some dark pleasure to know that Tim would need to work a little harder to get what he wanted from Wendy now.

"Don't go there," she told her brother simply and Troy shrugged the matter away like he did with most other things. He had a carelessness and ease to him that unfortunately hadn't rubbed off on his sister during their time in the womb together.

A hand reached between them and put a bottle of some clear spirit down on the bar in front of them. They both glanced back to find their older brother, George, behind them.

"You'll sober up in the time it takes you to get another beer from Buck," he told them, and Troy, not having to be told twice, snatched the bottle up and tipped it back.

"Hey!" Jodie protested, pinching the bottle away from him and drinking a sizeable amount for herself until her throat burned savagely and tears pricked at her closed eyelids.

"Nothing new on Rick?" George asked, glancing between his younger siblings.

"Nah," Troy answered for Jodie, who was blinking ferociously. "It's probably best that he didn't come, he and Shepard need to cool off away from each other."

"Yeah," George agreed, giving Jodie a stern look, "and it's probably best for you to keep away from the both of 'em."

Jodie just rolled her eyes and hid behind another gulp of what she guessed was vodka. She didn't see how it was possible to stay away from both of them. She had been so entwined with Rick and Tim for so long that she couldn't remember a time when she didn't have one or the other.

Rick needed her and Tim clearly wanted her. She hoped to God that Tim was telling the truth, that he wasn't responsible for what happened with Mike. She certainly believed that the fight and jumping had been retaliation to Rick's own attacks on the Shepard Gang. It sounded like something Rick would do, but only because he thought he was retaliating for Mike's death. It was all a misunderstanding, she thought. Maybe she could set things right. She only had Rick's best interests at heart.

 _Who would you live for?_

 _Who would you die for?_

 _And would you ever kill?_


	4. Think of You

**Author's Note:** This chapter matches up to chapter five and six of Ticket to Ride, which is now finished, might I add. I know, I'm devastated, too, but I already have a sequel in the works so it's not the end for Curly, Katie and the rest of the crew (:

Please be aware that all familiar characters and locations belong to S.E. Hinton and her book, The Outsiders. The chapter title and lyrics throughout are from Chris Young's song, Think of You. And the title of this fic comes from the song of the same name by The Beatles.

* * *

 _ **Wednesday, 8 January 1969**_

 _I walk in on Friday nights_

 _Same old bar, same burned out lights_

Jodie's eyes met Mike's when she walked into work one morning. He was smiling up at her from the newspaper on the table in the waiting area for clients, his eyes crinkling in the corners and grinning along with his mouth. Today marked the day Arnie Barnes' would stand up in front of a judge and plead guilty, she read, to first degree murder and possession of an unregistered firearm.

"How's Rick doing?" Linda, Jodie's manager, asked her when she walked out of the supplies cupboard to find Jodie poring over the front page article.

"Fine," Jodie said, though she knew it was far from the truth. Linda must have known, too, because she quirked an eyebrow at Jodie. "Maybe he's not dealing as well as he could be," Jodie mumbled.

"Will he be down at the courthouse today?"

"I don't know," Jodie said, tossing the newspaper back down on the coffee table. "I don't think either of us even knew it would be happening today."

"Maybe you should go," Linda said, "just in case he does."

"Maybe," Jodie echoed, moving toward her work station to pull out her scissors and combs, ready for the clients that would be arriving soon. As she pulled a can of hairspray out of a box of tools, Linda winced and Jodie glanced over her shoulder to see her clutching the side of her swollen stomach. "Are you alright?" she asked, her mind immediately jumping to the conclusion that the baby must be on its way _now_.

"Yeah," Linda waved her off with an uncomfortable laugh, "she's just running out of room in there."

"Are you sure?" Jodie asked anxiously as Linda poked an authoritative finger into the side of her stomach where the baby had kicked her.

"I'm sure," Linda responded, giving Jodie a confident grin. "This ain't my first rodeo."

It was true, and Jodie decided to take her word for it. Linda had a son already, four years old and eager to meet his baby brother, but Linda was adamant he would wind up with a dreaded little sister instead.

It reminded Jodie of the story of George hoping he would get a little brother, too, and not understanding how two babies could fit inside of their mom's stomach. He had gotten his little brother, but he'd gotten Jodie, too. He told Jodie now that it wasn't as catastrophic having a kid sister than what he had originally thought at four years of age.

The morning passed without any more overly painful kicks in the organs or gut and when Jodie's lunch hour came around, she found herself walking the couple of blocks over to the courthouse. She didn't know when Arnie was due to face the judge, he could have been sentenced already for all she knew, but she hoped that if Rick had ended up going she would catch him. She didn't know if she should consider it good luck or bad luck when she walked into one of the courtrooms and saw Arnie sitting beyond the bench seats for the public, facing the judge. She hadn't seen him around Tulsa since before he had been locked away, but she had seen his face once or twice in the paper and recognized the black hair on the back of his head.

A few rows behind him she noticed the back of Rick's head beside Dennis McKay's and Phil Black's to his left, and moved forward into the room to sit beside him just as the judge handed down the sentence of life imprisonment. She sat down next to Rick, but he didn't look at her, not even when she put her hand on top of his and squeezed. His eyes were trained on Arnie as his court-appointed attorney thanked the judge for his time and two police officers pulled Arnie to his feet, his hands cuffed in front of him. They led him out of the room swiftly and Jodie let out air she hadn't known she had been holding onto when the police and Arnie disappeared behind a door on the other side of the courtroom.

Once they were gone Rick finally looked at her for the first time and asked, "What're you doin' here?"

"I thought you might be here," she answered him before giving a tight smile to Phil and Dennis on the other side of him.

Rick seemed to accept her reason and they all stood to file out of the courtroom. They made it out into the cold outside before anybody said anything, and when somebody did speak, it was Phil.

"Let's get fucked up," he said, and Dennis, who pulled his car keys out of his pocket and tossed them into the air and caught them in front of him, grinned at Phil.

"Yeah, whatever," Rick said somewhat distractedly, his hand still holding onto Jodie's, "let's just get outta here."

Jodie walked with them to where Dennis' car was parked a couple of streets over and Rick turned to her once Dennis and Phil were already in the car and ready to go. "Are you gonna come back with us?" he asked her and she shook her head.

"I've gotta get back to the salon," she said, and added teasingly, "Some of us actually work for our money, you know."

Rick managed a pained grin. "Will you come 'round tonight then?"

"Yeah, if Troy or George can drop me," she answered.

"Call me at Phil's if they can't and I'll come get you," Rick insisted and Jodie, glowing from clearly being wanted, kissed him goodbye.

Later when she finished work and climbed into Troy's car, she asked if he could drop her at Phil's house before heading home.

"Sure," Troy answered with an easy shrug of his shoulders, "I might come in for a beer, too. I haven't seen those guys since the funeral."

"Arnie got life," Jodie told him and Troy's eyebrows shot up into his hairline.

"How do you know that?"

"I saw he was facing the court in the paper this morning," she answered. "He got his sentence on my lunch hour."

"You were there?"

"With Rick and a couple of his guys," Jodie nodded.

"How was Rick?" Troy asked, eyeing Jodie with a mixture of what she interpreted as wariness and sympathy.

"He didn't say much," Jodie said, remembering how he hadn't even noticed her until Arnie had been led away. "I think he was relieved when we got out of there, though."

"He might not be in the best shape tonight," Troy warned.

"I know, but I'd rather be there than not."

When they arrived, Phil answered the door and let them in to find several of the Brumly boys sitting around in the lounge room drinking beer and smoking joints. Troy clapped some on the backs and shook the hands of others as Rick wrapped an arm around Jodie's shoulders and offered her his beer with his free hand. She gave him a quick kiss on the cheek before accepting the beer, happy to see his expression lighter.

"Got a big night planned?" Troy asked and Jodie glanced at her brother and where his gaze had fallen. Phil was kneeling at the coffee table and seemed to have returned to sorting a powdery substance into small, straight lines on its surface.

"That son of a bitch is gonna be behind bars 'til he's grey," Rick said with a tone of sick delight, "it ain't as good as the electric chair, but it's good enough for now."

Something in his words made Jodie feel clammy and ill, but she soon forgot about it when Phil offered them a line. She and Troy exchanged a look and in moments like that she suspected that they might have some sort of twin telepathic power after all.

Why not, she heard her mind echo his, and with a shared shrug she followed him and Rick closer to the coffee table.

 _Same drinks that we're all raising_

 _But all of the toasts just don't feel the same_

The next day at work was exhausting, and not because it was any more busy than normal because it had actually been quieter than was typical for a Thursday. Jodie was tired and the mere act of standing on her feet all day was enough to exhaust her. Troy looked about as tired as Jodie did when he pulled up outside of her salon at the end of the work day and she climbed in.

Rick called her once she was home and invited her out again tonight, but she was about to pass out where she stood twirling the phone cord around her fingers and decided that she would stay at home. He came to her half an hour later instead, and though she suspected he wasn't able to sleep all night, he stayed with her while she did.

The next morning, with red and tired eyes, he drove her to work so that Troy could go straight to the garage he was employed by, and he promised to pick her up and take her out when she finished work that afternoon. He kept his word and was there waiting for her when the salon's closing time came. He even waved to Linda through the glass front of the salon as Jodie bid her goodbye and walked out.

It was Friday night and Rick and his boys had decided to throw a party at Phil's house, so Rick drove Jodie home and laid back on her bed and admired her as she changed her clothes and touched up her make-up and dark brown hair.

"I don't know why you need to make such a fuss about gettin' ready," he told her, though he didn't sound frustrated one bit at how long she was taking, "you're fuckin' gorgeous already."

George and Troy followed Rick and Jodie to Phil's place and a few of their boys joined them not long after. Jodie guessed that Arnie being put away was the reason for the party, but part of her thought that Rick and his buddies were just looking for any reason to party, and Arnie just happened to be the perfect one. When she voiced this suspicion to George he gave her a long, analyzing look.

"They might be goin' a bit overboard," he agreed with her, which did nothing to ease her worries. She knew plenty of people who smoked grass and had a line of coke or whatever their particular poison was on the odd occasion at parties or in similar sorts of social settings. Heck, she was one of those people, along with her brothers and their buddies, who she even knew sold some of the stuff to help them get by. But she had also seen people take things too far and if ever there was a situation that predisposed somebody to going overboard it was the one Rick and his friends were in now. "Everyone has their benders, though," George said, seeming to have noticed the worry lines in Jodie's frown. "He'll pull himself out of it in a few days; he has a gang to run." He clapped her on the shoulder and squeezed before heading off to the kitchen for another beer.

Jodie sipped her own beer and rejoined Rick, who was talking animatedly to a couple of his buddies. As she listened to him recount a story from when they had still been in high school and his gang was just coming into formation, she told herself that she didn't have anything to worry about.

George was right. Rick had a gang to run and it was clear from the way he spoke to and treated his members that the gang was the biggest thing in his life. And the killer of his best buddy had been locked away for the rest of his life. Rick had a right to be celebrating!

Jodie had desperately missed this side of Rick over the past month – the side that was funny and light-hearted, that looked at her like she was the most beautiful person he had ever laid eyes on instead of someone that was hardly worth his trouble alot of the time.

 _We used to be the life of the party_

 _We used to be the ones that they wished they were_

Jodie and Rick spent all day on Saturday between the sheets in Phil's spare bedroom that was more or less Rick's anyway. The day had been long, but had stretched into the night without Jodie even noticing. It was only when she started to notice Rick crashing that she realized that whatever he had taken that morning was starting to wear off. She knew when he left the room for a beer and came back with what he claimed was an itchy nose and no beer that he had gone out to his buddies for a pick-me-up instead. She was no fool and she wondered why he would care to hide it from her after he hadn't bothered to do so on past occasions.

"When was the last time you slept?" she asked him as he pulled his jeans off and joined her in bed again.

"Last night," he told her, but she knew it wasn't true. Perhaps he had slept intermittently, but she didn't think he had slept a full, solid night in several days – the truth of it was all over his face. "I love you, you know that?" he said, resting the side of his head on the pillow beside hers so that he was facing her. She smiled despite her worry.

"I love you, too," she said back, having already lost track of how many times they had exchanged those words over the past few days. Things hadn't been this good between them in a long time. "I worry about you sometimes, though," she said, lifting her hand to touch the side of his face softly.

"You don't need to," he said through a lazy smile meant to reassure her, "I can protect myself."

"It's not protection from other people I worry about."

"Then what is it?" he asked, taking her hand from his cheek and bringing it to his lips.

"Protection from yourself," she answered, not sure if it even made sense. "Your head," she elaborated, her tone still soft and kind, "it's so dark in there sometimes."

Silence fell as Rick stared into Jodie's brown eyes, his eyebrows pulling together as if trying to hold back something strong. Jodie thought for a moment that the floodgates of ease and honesty between them might slam shut again, but when Rick spoke he was raw with emotion.

"I miss him," Rick said, squeezing his eyes shut, "is it crazy that I still see him everywhere I go?" Jodie didn't know what to say, so she stayed quiet and Rick continued, his eyes opening up and showing her Mike's ghost in them. "But he's not really there. I can't talk to him."

"Maybe he is there," Jodie tried helpfully. "Maybe he can still hear you."

"But I can't hear him," Rick responded, anguish in his flaring nostrils. "And I _hate_ that. He should still be here."

"I know," she said trying to soothe him. "Arnie got the justice he deserved, though. That should help you move on now, right?"

"That's not justice," Rick said, letting go of Jodie's hand and rolling onto his back to stare up at the ceiling. "Not even close."

"He won't be able to kill anybody else, at least," Jodie countered.

"I doubt he would've killed anyone if Shepard hadn't told him to," Rick said, "and yet he's walkin' around free still."

Jodie winced; it always came back to Tim. She didn't know if she'd ever be able to escape him, but the memory of what he had told her on new year's eve floated forward to the front of her mind and now seemed like a better time than ever to tell him about it. Rick seemed to be more open and clear-minded now than he had been in a while. Jodie thought that maybe she could convince him that Tim had nothing to do with Mike being shot and that Rick would be able to let go of that anger and bitterness as a result and ultimately move forward from this horrible mess.

"Tim didn't do anything, Rick," Jodie said and when Rick turned his head to her and opened his mouth to shoot a dagger at her she continued, "he didn't know Arnie was going to shoot Mike until it had already happened. I don't think any of his boys knew."

"Don't be stupid," Rick started, but Jodie cut him off again.

"I spoke to him," she said, knowing that this would be the part Rick would dislike the most, "on new year's eve. He was at Buck's and I told him off for coming at you like he did just before Christmas, but he said it was retaliation for you jumping one of his guys or something..." She shook her head, she was getting off track. "He said he didn't know Arnie was gonna shoot Mike. He never gave that order."

Rick's jaw clenched and his lips settled into a straight, thin line. "Why the fuck would you talk to him?"

"That's not the point –"

"Why the fuck would you go _near_ him?" Rick wrenched himself out of the bed and grabbed his jeans up off the floor beside it. He pulled them on, ignoring Jodie's desperate attempts to calm him and get him to see the truth she had been trying to tell him.

 _But now it's like they don't know how to act_

 _Maybe they're like me and they want us back_

The atmosphere at Buck's changed the moment Rick and his boys walked in, it was what caused Tim to look around and catch sight of Rick making a beeline for him, his shoulders squared arrogantly and his face furious. Tim stood and moved around the table he had been sharing with his own gang and stopped in front of it. Tim's boys stood, too, ready for whatever drama Rick had clearly brought into Buck's with him.

"We have a problem," Rick said, coming to a stop a few feet away from Tim. "Several, actually."

Tim resisted the urge to roll his eyes. When didn't this guy have a problem?

Just as he was about to open his mouth and ask which problem Rick had plucked out of thin air this time, a smaller girl pressed through the front of the crowd that had gathered around them, calling Rick's name. Tim vaguely recognize her as Rick's sister, though last time he had seen the girl her face had been flecked with the blood that had started this whole new problem between her brother and Tim.

She came up from behind Rick and planted herself in front of him, pressing her hands to his chest before his hand came up to push her by the shoulder to the side, away from whatever was about to go down. His push was too forceful, though, for a pretty little thing her size, and she stumbled to the side, her body twisting from the push and toppling over. She landed with a loud crack from her head on one of the unoccupied wooden tables, then rebounded off of it and fell further down until her body hit the ground.

There was a collective gasp from those who had witnessed it and the room suddenly felt void of air as a single girl came rushing forward, yelling her name. _Katie_. The other girl, Katie's friend, Dale's girlfriend, dropped to the ground beside Katie as Jodie, who had come into Buck's with Rick and been standing behind him, followed suit.

"Katie!" Dale's girl repeated as she lifted Katie's head and cradled it in her hands.

Jodie leaned over her, hiding Katie's face from view, but she must have opened her eyes because Jodie looked up at Rick over her shoulder and said for everybody gathered there to hear that the girl was fine.

Tim looked back to Rick, aghast and disbelieving at having just witnessed him shove his sister so hard. The shocked look on Tim's face reflected in Rick's as Tim heard Curly start up.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?!" Curly shouted, stepping forward from where he had joined Tim just a few steps back from his side. "That's your fuckin' sister, man," he said and Tim stretched his left arm out across Curly's chest to physically tell him that he shouldn't take another step further.

Curly stopped and Tim, whose eyes hadn't left Rick for a second, said, "Let's take this outside 'fore you go and hit your girlfriend next."

Tim glanced at Jodie, still kneeling beside Katie, and their eyes met for a second before Rick turned and Tim followed. Most of Buck's place emptied out behind them in eager anticipation of the fight sure to happen out the front.

"You wanna tell me what problem you've got now?" Tim asked once they were out the front, standing on dirt not too far from where plenty of cars were parked. "Just so I can keep up, y'know," he added smart-alecky and Rick scowled at him, his grinding teeth sending his jaw around in circles. He was off his head on something and Tim was willing to bet that Rick had started taste testing the shit he sold now.

"What makes you think you have any right talkin' to my girl? Feedin' her bullshit about how _innocent_ you are," Rick said and then spat on the ground at Tim's feet.

"I didn't say a thing that wasn't true," Tim said, feeling like a broken record. "I didn't know Arnie even had the gun, much less that he was gonna use it on Mike, not until it was too late anyway. But hey, ain't that the risk you run when you get a guy's girl drunk and use it to your advantage?" Tim glanced around to see his boys, Pete, Curly, Dale and Glenn among them, nodding their agreement with him, contrasting against the foul looks on the faces of the Brumly boys. Billy Prause and a few of his Tiber Street boys were nodding, too, and Tim hoped that if this turned into an all out brawl between the two gangs he might have some back up from the Tigers.

"Fuck you," Rick growled and his hand reached into his jeans pocket, pulled out a switch and flicked the blade out.

Tim shouldn't have been surprised. "You're gonna fight dirty?"

"Your brother did with Mike," Rick responded, nodding his head at where Curly stood to Tim's right. The light shining out from inside Buck's caught Rick's eyes and Tim saw a craze in them he hadn't noticed earlier. "Punched him from behind right before he was shot." Something new crossed his face, "Was that the plan? Distract me with your brother; make me think he was the danger while his buddy had the gun."

Tim let out an exasperated breathe, not even knowing how to respond to a story so wild. "You're fuckin' crazy," he said and Rick must have decided he was sick of talking now because he lunged for Tim, his knife held out in front of him, before Tim even finished his last syllable.

Tim was quick, though, and slipped out of the knife's aim before it plunged into his chest. He threw a punch at Rick's ribs as he moved and it connected, hard enough that Tim thought he might have broken a rib or two.

Rick stumbled and Tim went for the wrist holding the knife. He grasped Rick's wrist tight in his left hand and, distracted by trying to reach his other hand out to grab at the top of the knife's hilt, he copped a blow to his right cheek. It knocked him to the side a little, but he refused to relinquish his hold on Rick. To do that could be disastrous. He continued his attempt at reaching for the knife and when his free hand wrapped around the top of the hilt, just above where Rick's fingers were wrapped around it, he wrenched it out of Rick's grasp. The left hand that had struck Tim in the face had been reaching up for the knife, too, and in one fluid motion Tim sliced the blade down over Rick's left bicep and then flicked the switchblade closed and tossed it at Pete's feet behind him. Pete didn't miss a beat and snatched the switch up so it couldn't be used again. Not by Rick, at least.

The crowd of people gathered around cheered and yelled, and when Tim turned back to Rick he found it was because Rick was coming at him again. He didn't have the time to dodge his attack again and he was tackled to the ground, landing hard on his back. Rick punched Tim in the throat and in reflex Tim brought a knee up and slammed it into Rick's groin. He figured that if Rick was going to fight dirty then so could he.

Rick grunted and Tim shoved him off of him easily, Rick rolling onto his back beside him. The tables turned and Tim rolled over on top of Rick and brought his right hand back high and then smashed it down into Rick's mouth and then again into his right eye. Rick's eyes fell shut and all the fight in his body disappeared immediately. His hands, which had been reaching for Tim's neck, fell to the ground, limply stretched out on either side of him.

Tim pushed himself up and shook his fist out as he glanced around at the remaining Brumly boys. None of them seemed eager to continue the fight, so Tim left them behind and headed back inside. He needed a fucking beer. And some ice for his stinging cheek.

When he brought his hand up to feel the bruised lump that was likely there it came back wet with blood. Tim cussed under his breath as he stopped at the table he had occupied before Rick had walked in, and a few of his boys crowded around.

"Your shirt's ripped," Pete pointed out and Tim glanced down at his white shirt to find that the bottom of it was indeed slightly ripped.

He reached down and ripped it further, tearing off a sizable chunk, and lifted the material to his cheek. He pressed hard despite the pain; needing to put pressure on it otherwise it would bleed all night long.

Tim glanced around for Curly, hoping the kid hadn't jumped in to kick Rick's unconscious body after Tim had turned his back. Sure, it had been a shock to Tim too to see Rick knock his sister flying like that, and he didn't like it, either, but Curly's response had been all guns blazing and Tim wasn't sure where it had come from. He was probably drunk, Tim thought, remembering Curly had been at the drive-in cinema before coming over to Buck's – there wasn't much else to do at the drive-in than drink, and drink hard. Tim's eyes didn't find him standing anywhere nearby, but they did spy him disappearing up the stairs across the room with Dale.

Tim had no way of knowing for sure because he had walked out of Buck's before Katie was even off the floor, but he guessed that Jodie and Dale's girl would have taken Katie upstairs to clean her up since her head had hit the table hard enough to break skin. He kept an eye on the stairs and when people continued to try and talk to him about the fight he moved closer toward the staircase, telling them he just needed a moment. He was standing to the side of the bottom of the staircase when Curly and Dale came back down.

"What's goin' on up there?" Tim asked Curly as Dale walked on without him toward the kitchen.

"Dale's girl thinks we need to take them to her sister to see if she needs stitches," Curly said, "so Dale and I were gonna drive them there in the car they came in."

Tim didn't understand how it was Curly's responsibility to get Brumly's younger sister home safely, but he couldn't find a good enough reason to stop him. She was a girl, and she needed help – he had heard Pete say when they'd come back inside that Rick's boys had taken off. Curly obviously knew her from school before Arnie shot her brother's friend and Tim guessed that maybe they had been friends before, perhaps they still were despite their older brothers wanting to beat each other up all the time.

"You make sure you come find me if there's any trouble," Tim told Curly, who nodded.

"How bad is your cheek?" Curly asked and Tim pulled the cloth of his shirt away to show his throbbing gash.

"Thomas was off his fuckin' head, man. He was all over the joint, just cause I told his girl that I had nothing to do with his buddy dyin' but that that's what happens when you fuck with another guy's girl." Curly nodded and Tim remembered the way the wild look in his eyes had glinted in the light shining out from inside. "He's a fuckin' lunatic if he's willin' to pull a knife on me for tellin' the God damn truth." Dale appeared again, holding up a bag of frozen peas and declaring his find. "Remember what I said," Tim warned Curly as his brother turned to go back upstairs. "Don't go off half-cocked if there's trouble, you come to me."

"Yeah," Curly said and took off up the stairs with Dale, though Tim hardly believed that he would listen and heed his instruction.

 _It's like there's always an empty space_

 _Those memories that nobody can erase_

 _Of how bright we burned_


	5. You Break Me

**Author's Note:** Sorry it's taken so long to get this chapter up. There really isn't any good excuse, I was just being lazy... This chapter matches up to chapter seven and eight of Ticket to Ride.

Please be aware that all familiar characters and locations belong to S.E. Hinton and her book, The Outsiders. The chapter title and lyrics throughout are from Ed Sheeran's song, You Break Me. And the title of this fic comes from the song of the same name by The Beatles.

* * *

 ** _Monday, 13 January 1969_**

 _Well my friend, it seems we've come too far to disagree_

 _My knees feel weak and I fell too fast_

 _The tide is high, but we swam in too deep_

"So," Troy King began as he drove himself and Jodie downtown to work on Monday morning, "you wanna give me your version of the fight Rick and Tim had on Saturday night?"

"You weren't told all about it while you were cruisin' down the Ribbon all day yesterday?" Jodie responded, not particularly feeling like telling Troy about how stupid she had been, but knowing that if anybody was going to understand where she had been coming from, it would be him.

"Oh, I heard plenty, don't you worry," he grinned at her as he stopped the car at a red traffic light, "but I wanna know the whole truth, nothin' but the truth, so help you God."

Jodie sighed, knowing that Troy wouldn't let it go. She might get out of his car this morning without telling him a word, but he would be asking again the moment she got back in it this afternoon.

"I was just tryin' to help, but I think I just ended up doing more damage."

Rick's younger sister, Katie, had certainly thought so at least, if the way she had screamed at Jodie was anything to go by. Jodie had tried explaining her side of the situation to Katie in Buck's bathroom while her friend, Susan, cleaned up the bloody gash on Katie's forehead from where she had hit her head on the edge of a table when Rick had pushed her over, but she had been furious with Jodie and screeched at her to get out. Because she was an idiot.

Katie had been right in everything she had said. Jodie had been an idiot to think that even uttering Tim Shepard's name to Rick wouldn't set him off.

"Help Rick?"

"Rick. The gangs. The whole situation, really," she answered, looking out the window at the passing run-down, greaser homes as the light turned green and Troy took off again. "Tim didn't give any order for Mike to be killed, Troy."

Troy gave Jodie a pointedly disbelieving look, "You really believe that?"

"He told me, and I believe him," Jodie said defensively. "Think about it, Tim and his gang take credit for everything they do, the more criminal the better."

"Takin' responsibility for someone dyin' is a bit more serious than ownin' up to slashing George's tyres 'cause you're lookin' for a fight," Troy told Jodie. "Don't forget he's told plenty of people that Mike got what he deserved, too."

"He's gotta say that, right? Defend his guy no matter what, or whatever you idiots do."

Troy raised an eyebrow at her sceptically. "I dunno, Jodes. Everyone seems pretty set in the belief that Tim called that shot."

"They don't know Tim," she said with a persistent shake of her head.

"And you do?" Troy laughed. "You went round with the guy for a couple months in junior year and that means you still know the real Tim Shepard five years later?"

"He's only ever defended himself and his gang," she told her brother, her patience wearing thin, "trust me, I didn't believe him at first, either, but it makes _sense_. Any problem he and Rick have ever had, especially in the last year, has been Tim retaliating against _Rick_. Like over Christmas, Tim and his boys jumped a couple of Rick's, but it was 'cause Rick's boys were on their land, sellin' stuff that everyone knows Tim doesn't like on his turf."

"So it makes even more sense that Tim would retaliate against Mike for takin' advantage of his sister after she had a few drinks."

"You've met Angel Shepard," Jodie said with a roll of her eyes, "she gets herself into that kind of trouble every weekend. If Tim shot every guy that slept with her we'd have hardly any JDs left in Tulsa, some of your boys included." Jodie knew she'd made a good point when Troy didn't immediately rebuff the theory. "It's more likely that Arnie would retaliate for that, right? And wouldn't it be likely that he wouldn't tell Tim, or anyone else in the gang for that matter, about his plans to shoot Mike because it would likely cause a bigger mess for Tim and his gang than one of Angel's one night stands is worth?"

"Jodie," Troy started, not exactly believing her, but unable to argue against her logic now.

"I'm right, Troy," she said with conviction when he glanced at her.

Troy was silent for a moment before sighing and squeezing the bridge of his nose between his fingers as he drove. "I take it Rick doesn't agree, though?"

Jodie loosed a breath, confident that she might have convinced Troy, or at least made him unsure enough to contemplate it.

"I thought he might, or I wouldn't have said anything," she said, her mood darkening as she remembered how open he had been one moment and how quickly he had shut down on her the second she had offered a different view to his. "We had this moment of, clarity, I guess. He was actually talkin' about Mike, about how he felt. And obviously he blames Tim, but I thought maybe I could explain to him that it wasn't as big as he was makin' it in his head. I was tryin' to stop things getting any worse than they already are, all because of a stupid misunderstanding."

"Rick's hated Tim for a long time, he'll believe what he wants to believe," Troy said, giving Jodie's shoulder a comforting squeeze.

"He sure showed that when he completely disregarded what I had to say and just focused on the Tim and I talking part, and then went down to Buck's and got his butt kicked over it."

"Man, that would've been a good fight to see."

"It was terrible," Jodie responded, remembering leaving Katie in the bathroom with Susan and going out onto Buck's front porch to see Tim tossing Rick's blade at Pete's feet before proceeding to knock Rick out cold. It sent shivers down her spine just thinking about it.

"You're such a girl," Troy teased and Jodie smacked him lightly in the back of his head. He rubbed it dramatically before saying, "He wasn't that aggressive with you over it all, was he?"

"I haven't seen him since," Jodie shrugged, "one of his buddies drove me home after Tim knocked him out."

She didn't know how their next conversation was going to go. Probably badly. He wouldn't see past her speaking to Tim behind his back – he never saw past anything Jodie had to do with Tim.

Perhaps he would break up with her again, and maybe that wouldn't be a bad thing, she thought as she realized that she was a little bit more than just nervous to see him again. There was fear there now, bubbling lightly in her belly. He hadn't meant to knock his sister out when he had pushed her on Saturday night, but he had done it all the same. And he had pulled a knife on Tim that he would have used if he'd not been stopped. He was becoming more and more unpredictable, and less and less like the guy she thought she knew. She didn't know what he would do next, but she doubted it would be anything good.

 _To catch your breath you tear me apart piece by piece_

 _You can take away all this mess_

 _And I could never think anything less of you_

Tim was downtown, walking back to Pete's car after exchanging some lifted car parts for a decent stack of cash, when he noticed Jodie's brown head of hair walking down the street ahead of them and turning into a diner. He hadn't seen her since Saturday night and still didn't know what the hell she had said to Rick to make him come at Tim with a knife out the front of Buck's, but he was mighty pissed with her whatever it was – his split cheek was still throbbing two days later.

Tim left Pete at his car and by the time he made it to the front doors of the diner, Jodie was coming out again, a wrapped sandwich in her hand. She stopped in her tracks a moment before she would have ploughed right into him, and looked up into his blue eyes with brown ones with dark rings under them.

"What do you want?" she asked, placing her free hand on her hip and giving Tim the most formidable look she could muster.

"Certainly not another fight with your boyfriend over jack-shit," Tim quipped as he leant against the diner wall and pulled his pack of cigarettes out of his pocket. "Is he gonna come after me again for runnin' into you in public now?"

"Don't worry, I'm done being your defender," Jodie said with a roll of her eyes.

"Defender?" Tim said with a laugh. "Don't quit your day job, kid."

"Don't call me a kid," Jodie said before turning to continue back up the street.

"You sure act like one sometimes," Tim said after her, and she stopped and took the bait, hook and all.

"I was trying to tell him you weren't involved in what happened to Mike," Jodie hissed as she turned back to face Tim. "I was trying to stop Rick antagonising this stupid war you've got goin' on between your two gangs before someone else dies."

"Which just backfired and almost got me stabbed instead," Tim countered. Jodie let out an exasperated snort before crossing her arms over her chest, so close to apologizing for escalating the problem between the two boys, though her stubbornness refused to let her bow to Tim. "You know he hates me for whatever it is about me you find so irresistible," he continued, pausing to look her up and down as she scoffed at him, "Tellin' him I'd spoken to you about that has gotta be the dumbest thing you could've done. Of course he ain't gonna believe me, he's just gonna think I'm tryin' to make a move on you."

Jodie looked away from Tim at the brick wall behind him, knowing that Tim was right. She should have known. She had been dumb to think otherwise. To think that Rick loved her enough to at least hear her out, to understand that she was trying to make his life easier, better.

"I thought I had the best chance of getting through to him," she said more quietly, still refusing to meet Tim's eyes with a sudden crestfallenness in the crease of her eyebrows that just pissed Tim off more. He wouldn't go easy on her just because she knew all too well how to play the victim.

"He's using the shit he's sellin', ain't he?" Tim asked, needing confirmation of exactly what he was dealing with.

"I don't know about all that stuff," Jodie said with a frown, suspecting Rick wouldn't be too happy about her giving Tim any information on his gang and what they did.

"You look like you do," Tim said, reaching out and grabbing Jodie's chin in his hand, tilting her face to look at him before she yanked it back out of his grasp.

"You don't know what you're talkin' about," Jodie said, knowing he had been trying to inspect the bags under her eyes and the pale tint of her skin, "I haven't slept so good this weekend, and not because of whatever you think I've been doing."

"You ain't ever gonna get much sleep when you go round with someone like Rick Thomas."

"I don't even know if I still am," Jodie said, finally looking at Tim and glaring at him, "thanks to you."

"You're not blamin' me for this," Tim said with a roll of his eyes before pushing off of the wall he was leaning against, preparing to head back up the street to Pete's car, "this one's all you, kid."

Jodie watched him walk away for a few moments before turning and heading back to the salon with a sandwich she didn't feel like eating anymore in her hand.

 _She_ had approached Tim on new years eve, and _she_ had told Rick that Tim was innocent when she should have known he would never believe her over his own adamancy that Tim was the one responsible for all that had gone wrong in his life recently. Indeed, this one was all on her.

 _"Cause you break me, you numb me_

 _You still seem to stun me_

 _This pain has outrun me_

"It's gotta be the Devilhawks," Tim told Pete on Friday afternoon. They had been going back and forth – through a few beers, too – in Tim's lounge room for the last couple of hours.

"Or the Packers," Pete argued, "they're just as likely as the Devilhawks."

Pete was right, it could've been either downtown gang that was supplying Brumly with drugs, but Tim leant more toward the Devilhawks than the Packers, purely because he had personal experience with the slimy Devilhawks leader and didn't like him one bit. All he knew of the Packers was what he had heard throughout the gossip mills of Tulsa, which wasn't much since they stuck to their side of the city and Tim stuck to his.

They had excluded the Tigers and the River Kings from their suspicions because the Tigers had basically picked Tim's side, and because Tim knew the Kings still focused primarily on lifting and selling a bit of grass, though he had come across Jodie's brothers getting rowdy a couple of times in the past and suspected more than alcohol had been consumed.

"Does it really matter?" Pete continued. "What're you gonna do with the information either way – start a war with a downtown gang, too?"

Tim was about to tell Pete to fuck off when he heard the sound of footsteps on the front porch and the front door opening. Instead, he just flipped Pete off as Glenn entered the lounge room and asked what was going on as he took a seat in one of the empty armchairs and kicked his feet up on the coffee table, almost knocking the ashtray off as he did it.

Pete glanced at Tim before saying, "Tryin' to decide what to do tonight," in answer as Curly, who had come in behind Glenn, continued through the lounge room and into the kitchen. Tim noticed the tension in the way Curly carried himself immediately.

"What's happening?" Glenn asked as Curly re-entered the room and handed him a cold beer.

"Nothin'," Pete answered as Curly popped the top off his own beer and guzzled back a long, full gulp. "We'll probably just end up at Buck's."

"What's your problem?" Tim asked Curly as he pulled the beer away from his lips, a bitter expression on his face.

"Nothin'."

"Bullshit," Tim scoffed, giving his bother a look up and down. He looked like Tim, wound tight and ready to pounce, but Tim was curious, so he chipped away at him some more. "You're shitty 'bout somethin'. What happened at school?"

"Jesus, nothing happened, lay off."

"Thomas' boys were back at school today," Glenn said and Tim turned his attention to him.

"Do we know what they were out of school for?" Pete asked as Tim remembered the boys telling him at the pool hall yesterday about two of Rick's boys, Bradley and Jeff, not turning up for school all week.

Glenn shook his head, though, and glanced at Curly, who Tim gave a stern look before Curly spat out, "Just that it was gang shit."

"You just assuming that or you know it for fact?" Pete asked, raising a sceptical eyebrow at Curly as Tim's eyes burned holes in his little brother.

"Katie was around for a bit this week," Glenn explained.

"You think you can get more out of her?" Pete asked Glenn, who just shrugged and turned his eyes to Curly again. Tim was glad that Pete was taking control of the conversation and asking all the questions Tim should have been asking, because Tim's focus was solely on his brother now, and on why Curly looked like he wanted to punch one of his best buddies for mentioning the girl. Suspicion rose inside of Tim, regardless of the fact he had very little to go on.

"Doubt it," Curly muttered, before looking over at Tim. "Your girl probably knows more than Katie."

"Fuck up, Curly," Tim barked, recalling the conversation from Monday evening when Curly had called Tim out on whatever he thought had been happening between Tim and Jodie on new years eve, "she ain't my girl. And anyway, she's too fuckin' scared of Thomas to even look at me right now."

It was true. He had seen her with her brothers at Jay's twice this week and she'd refused to meet his eye even once. She might still be mad at him for how harsh he had been when they had spoken outside of that diner on Monday, but to Tim it was more likely that Jodie was trying to steer clear of anything that could aggravate Rick further, because of course she would be trying to get back into his good books. It was what she did every time she fucked up.

"Sounds a bit like you and Katie today, man," Glenn commented and Curly glared.

"I thought she was good with you after Thomas roughed her up on the weekend? You took her home, didn't you?"

"Rick dropped her at school yesterday morning," Glenn shrugged, "your guess on what he said to her is as good as mine, but she's acted funny since."

Perhaps he had gotten wind that his kid sister had been slumming it with some Shepards. Maybe he had heard that Tim's brother had been the one to take Katie home. It was more likely he had said something completely unrelated to her and she was staying away from Curly for her own sensible reasons, but Tim couldn't help wondering how Rick might react to that information anyway.

Curly glanced uneasily at Tim, who noticed everything from the look in his eyes to the way his hands shook slightly as he took a cigarette from his packet, before saying, "She's a bird, and a Brumly one at that. Who fuckin' knows what's goin' on in that head."

Tim didn't care what was in her head. What was in Curly's head was what had piqued Tim's interest now.

 _The tide flows out as I leave empty rooms_

 _To spur this on we left that room too long_

 _You open wide and all the lies flow out to eat you whole_

They wound up at Jay's later than evening, with plans to move on to Buck's once the night was well and truly in swing. It turned out to be a good place and a good night for Tim to observe what he couldn't yet properly understand.

Rick and some of his buddies were already there, including Jeff and Bradley, who Curly had pointed out to Tim when they arrived. Tim followed Curly's gaze about half an hour later and found it resting on where Dale had pulled up a chair with a girl who Tim figured was Dale's girl by the way she lent close to him and the way Rick's younger sister, who was there with Dale's girl, rolled her eyes at the two of them.

Tim supposed Katie was good looking enough considering her likeness to her brother. Her hair was a few shades lighter than Rick's, but she frowned like he did. Curly turned his attention away from the Brumly girl and said something to Glenn, who grinned back at him. The few beers Curly had drunk at home before coming to Jay's must have lightened his mood a bit if we was wisecracking now.

Tim thought he was probably thinking on it too much, that he was looking at things that weren't really there, but there was something about Curly and his mood today that had irked him, a puzzle he didn't have all the pieces to.

He dismissed the thought that Curly and Katie might have been something together at one time or another as soon as it crossed his mind. Curly had never been covert about the girls he'd brought home in the past and Tim would have noticed if one of them was from Brumly. And nothing could be happening now if she wouldn't even look at him. Curly was stupid, but he wouldn't be that stupid. He was too eager to prove himself to Tim and though he always seemed to fuck that up, he knew he was on thin ice already; he wouldn't do anything to make their situation with Brumly any more complicated after the role he had played in inciting that situation.

Burgers were served at Tim's table and just as he took his first bite, he caught the flick of Jodie's brown hair in the corner of his eye. He must have missed her walking in with her brothers as he and the boys had squabbled over which burger was whose, but she had his attention now as she left her brothers by the table they had pulled chairs up to and continued on to where the Brumly boys sat at their own table across the diner.

He couldn't hear from where he sat what was said, but he saw her arms wrapped tightly around herself as she spoke to Rick, and a moment later Rick threw down a fry he had been about to eat and stood, following her outside where Tim would have no hope of hearing them. He didn't need to, though; he figured he already knew how it would go.

It began with Jodie, who had asked Rick if they could talk mostly to get the inevitable out of the way, apologizing. She knew he must be mad about her part in what had happened on the weekend, for speaking to his enemy and trying to defend said enemy to Rick.

"I'm sorry," she began, aware as she spoke that she still believed in Tim's innocence and that apologizing was quite contradictory to that, "I didn't mean for any of what happened to happen. I thought I could help."

"By havin' conversations about me with Shepard behind my back?" Rick asked, his arms folded across his chest and his face set hard and impassive. "The only thing that could help me concerning the two of you is you stayin' the hell away from him."

"I know, but it was one conversation," Jodie tried to explain, feeling for all the world like a scolded child, "and my intention was actually to defend you in that _one_ conversation." Rick gave her an incredulous look as he pulled his pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket. "What I was tryin' to say on the weekend got out of hand too quickly for me to even explain properly –"

"And why do you think that is?" Rick asked, leaning down toward her and giving her a taunting look like she was daft. "I don't care what the fuck you have to say or what he has to say. I expect him to try it on with you because he knows you make me fuckin' crazy, but I don't expect you to encourage that."

"I don't," Jodie started to defend, but Rick cut her off again.

"Or maybe I _should_ expect it now," he mused before bringing his cigarette to his lips and lighting it. "You've gone from me to him and back so many times now that maybe I'm the idiot for expecting anythin' more from you. Am I not interesting enough for you anymore? Is wanting to avenge my dead best friend too much for you to handle so you're switchin' sides again?"

"Don't be stupid," she told him exhasperatedly.

Him wanting to avenge his dead best friend was the reason she was still standing there in front of him, still trying to smooth things over and salvage whatever had been between them for this long. She didn't like who he was a lot of the time, and she didn't like what he was doing with himself and his gang or where they were headed, but now, when Rick was in the deepest pit she had ever seen him in, was not the time to abandon him.

"I ain't the stupid one here, Dollface," Rick responded with a bitter laugh as he turned and walked back inside, his cigarette glowing between his lips as he left Jodie behind in the cold.

She didn't follow him. There had been enough dismissal in his tone for her to know that he wouldn't continue the conversation any further, not right now. She knew this was the worst time possible to abandon Rick, that he needed her now more than ever, whether he was aware of it or not, but there wasn't much she could do if he pushed her out.

 _Exorcise these demons_

 _But they keep talking to me_

 _I am no believer, but I believe you will relieve me_


	6. Complicated

**Author's Note:** This chapter coincides with part of chapter eight of Ticket to Ride.

Please be aware that all familiar characters and locations belong to S.E. Hinton and her book, The Outsiders. The chapter title and lyrics throughout are from Rihanna's song, Complicated. And the title of this fic comes from the song of the same name by The Beatles.

* * *

 _ **Monday, 20**_ _ **January 1969**_

 _Why is everything with you so complicated_

 _Why do you make it hard to love you_

 _Oh, I hate it_

"You're the talk of Tulsa, you know?" Pete asked when Tim pulled up in his driveway after dropping Curly and Angela at school. Tim had even gotten lucky, having to take his siblings to school on the same morning that Rick Thomas had to take his. Not much had happened but a pissing contest between the two gang leaders...

Rick had inquired about their knowledge of Dennis McKay's rims being lifted from his car outside of Buck's on Saturday night. Alot of that night was now a blur for Tim, who had drunk a few too many shots of whiskey in salute to Glenn's eighteenth birthday, but he distinctly remembered Pete being the thief and mastermind of that particular plan.

"Because Thomas thinks I'm responsible for McKay's missing rims?" Tim asked as he closed his car door and leant against it.

"He does?" Pete asked, his eyes alight with the same mischief they had plotted on Saturday as they left Buck's in the early hours of the morning.

"Well he thinks one of ours did it," Tim carried on, "he was droppin' his sister at school when I was there doin' the same. I didn't let on it was us, but he seems to have a pretty good idea anyway."

"No doubt," Pete agreed with a wide grin. "That ain't what everybody was talkin' 'bout on the Ribbon yesterday, though."

"Yeah?" Tim prompted before lighting up a cigarette when it became clear that Pete was going to make him ask for the information.

"Apparently Jodie King's your girl again," Pete said with a wriggle of his eyebrows and Tim coughed out his first draw of smoke.

"Fuck off," Tim croaked as Pete howled with laughter, "you know that ain't true."

"That's what I said," Pete responded once his laughing died down to a chuckle, "but she sure ain't Rick's girl anymore."

"What happened?"

"He dropped her, and everybody's sayin' it's because she can't leave you alone."

"What a load of shit."

"Not to the rest of Tulsa. Plenty of people saw the two of you talkin' on new years with Thomas nowhere in sight, and good ol' Two-Bit is sayin' he saw the two of you downtown together last week when we were makin' that transaction. And then the most recent fight you and Thomas had at Buck's was over her in a way, too, so there's that aswell."

Tim took a long, much smoother draw of his cigarette as he mulled over the information. They had only been talking on both occasions, but people tended to take moments like that and run wild with them. It was typical that everybody took from the fight he had with Rick at Buck's the other weekend that Rick was just jealous, and not a complete, raving lunatic instead.

"Why didn't Thomas say anything this morning, then? Or pick a fight with me at Jay's on Friday after he dropped her?" Because Tim was sure that it had happened on Friday night, when he had watched Jodie approach Rick and then watched Rick proceed to tear her down. There had been something desperate in the way she had looked at Rick that night, like she was clinging on to a thread and not a man, and Tim didn't want to remember the look in her eyes when Rick had left her standing outside in the cold alone.

"Doesn't want to look like he cares," Pete answered with a shrug. "People were talkin' like it was no skin off his back to let her go. If he makes a big deal of it, then you win, right?"

"Who fuckin' cares," Tim said, "neither of us want her so nobody wins."

"You could, though," Pete said. "It ain't like you've never been with her before, and you could really piss Thomas off if you did."

"I don't think she'd go for it."

"She might, if not just because it'll get Rick's attention."

"Is it really worth makin' a deal with the devil, though?"

Pete shrugged his shoulders and gave Tim a knowing look before saying, "It's your call."

 _'Cause if you really wanna be alone_

 _I will throw my hands up 'cause, baby, I tried_

 _But everything with you is so complicated_

After spending every week night holed up in her bedroom, Jodie was more than a little bit uncomfortable on Friday night when Troy and George refused to take no for an answer and forced her to go to Buck's with them. She couldn't hide away from the world forever was their argument when she had told them before that she wasn't in the mood to go out.

She was aware that everybody knew about Rick breaking up with her, and she would have been a fool to think they wouldn't be talking about it. According to Troy, they were talking about how Rick had had enough of her running back to Tim and told her to do just that because he didn't care anymore. It was ridiculous because of course Rick would care – he had fought Tim for _talking_ to her – but it was mortifying that people thought she kept running back to Tim, when it was Rick she could never stay away from for long.

She told herself it was because of that need to see him, to at least be in the same room as him, that had her giving in to her brothers and allowed them to take her to Buck's with them. She didn't even know if Rick would be there, but she had hoped, and so far she had been sorely let down.

She was getting tired of girls approaching her to compliment her curls or her skirt just to then ask if it was true she was back with Tim. It was killing her buzz from the few beers she had drunk since arriving, and she was well and truly ready to call it a night when she walked out onto Buck's front porch to smoke the cigarette she had pinched from George.

As she leaned over the railing,resting her forearms against it, and smoked her cigarette, she planned on going back inside and asking one of her brothers for a ride home. If they wouldn't take her she would convince one of their boys, or any other boy there. She didn't really care. Maybe leaving with another boy would answer everybody's stupid questions about whether she was really dating Tim Shepard again since Rick Thomas dropped her.

And then she heard him. She heard his laugh, amongst a few others', and it was music to her ears despite the fact that she was angry at him for failing to hear her out, for jumping down her throat and for dumping her like she was nothing special. She deserved more say in that matter, after how long she had spent as his girl, all the things she had put up with and witnessed. He had hardly ever been a saint in their relationship, regardless of whether they were on or off. If she had fallen into bed with Tim Shepard a couple of times throughout that duration, it was probably because Rick had driven her to it.

Rick led the way through the dark toward the porch steps, and came to a stop when he reached the top of them, having noticed Jodie leaning on the railing, alone.

"I'll meet y'all in there," he told the guys that had fallen stationary behind him, and as they disappeared inside Jodie thought to herself that the same force that kept pulling her to Rick must have been pulling him to her just as hard.

He could have ignored her and kept walking. A part of her had feared he would, but the fact that he didn't had her mustering her confidence as he walked toward her and then took a seat on an old couch behind her, placed against the front window of Buck's.

She wanted to say so much when she turned around to face him, leaning back against the porch railing again for support. She wanted to tell him what a jerk he was, how unreasonable he was, how sorry she was that she had ever said anything to him about that stupid conversation with Tim, but all that came out was, "How've you been?"

"What do you care?" he asked, pulling a cigarette from his own packet and lighting up.

She resisted the urge to roll her eyes. "I care," was all she said.

"You got a funny way of showin' it," he said coldly, and the muscles in her body immediately tightened.

"I could say the same thing about you," she said, aggravated, not understanding why he bothered to speak to her if he wasn't planning on getting anything positive from it, "You could've gone straight inside. Maybe you still should."

"It's a free country; I can sit and smoke wherever I want."

"And you want to do it here in front of me."

"I wanna do it on the porch," he said with a shrug as he blew smoke in her direction. "I can't help that you're here."

Jodie snorted and looked away, out at the dark, chilly night. Her stocking covered legs were freezing as she took a drag of her cigarette. "You sure know how to make a girl feel wanted."

"You ain't wanted."

Her cold face stung like he had slapped her and something hot settled in her stomach, making her feel sick, but she tried not to let it show. "Please," she spat at him stubbornly. "You and I know that's not true."

"Then tell me somethin' that is," he said, leaning forward at the same moment the front door opened and light from inside spilled out and illuminated his eyes. She loved them so much, or she had. She didn't quite know when the present had become the past.

She waited for a couple of giggling girls to make their way down the porch steps on the arms of a couple of guys who looked about as drunk as them.

When they were alone again, she said, "I don't think I remember the last time I saw you without bloodshot eyes." Bloodshot, and with pupils so big and black she could hardly find the hazel around them.

He raised an eyebrow at her, evidently unprepared for a truth so simple and the sadness she said it with, and for a moment she thought she saw something soft in his expression. She continued, wanting to grasp that softness and pull it out of him, to show him that it was there so there would be no denying its existence.

"Being together or not doesn't make a difference," she told him as she flicked her finished cigarette over the porch railing and moved forward to sit down beside him on the couch, "I still care. And I worry about you."

Rick let out a low, bitter laugh and said, "Because my head is so dark and I'm a danger to myself, right?"

He was twisting and using her words against her. Words she had said before everything blew up over Tim, said with love and kindness, and he was throwing them back in her face.

"Yeah, it is," she said, leaning away from him a little and deciding that she had definitely been mistaken in thinking he had stayed out here with her to work things out, "and you are." He laughed again and she pushed herself back up onto her feet, anger rolling off of her in waves at how dismissive and cruel he was being to her. "You're probably gonna think I'm the crazy one for sayin' this, but you're unstable, Rick. You're gonna hurt someone else or yourself, or maybe both, and all I've been doing this past month and a half is try my hardest to help you. My methods might not have been so great, but at least I was tryin', because here's another truth; I recognize you less and less every day. You ain't the same anymore."

Rick had no response, he just stared up at her from where he sat on the couch, taking a puff of his cigarette and blowing it out in her direction, his eyes and face blank. Memories of the smiling boy she had fallen for so many years ago flashed before her eyes, but looking at the man before her she could see no resemblance to that boy in his face. It hurt, like something sharp in her chest, and she had to turn away before he could glimpse the tears that sprung up into her eyes.

Her vision blurred as she stomped down the steps of Buck's front porch and took off through the parking area, her breath held, her hands curled into fists. When she was out of his sight she tore off at a run, the tears trickling onto her cheeks now. She didn't stop until she reached the highway a short way from Buck's, where she leant against a tree on the side of the road, gasping for air in between sobs.

She sank to the frost covered ground and pulled her heels off, telling herself to get a grip. She needed to wipe away the streaks in her make-up from her tears, needed to put her shoes back on her aching feet, get up and walk back to Buck's and find someone – one of her brothers or anybody else – to take her home. Yet her confidence to do so didn't increase as her heart rate slowed again. Her breathing steadied, but she couldn't bring herself to go back there where Rick would see her, not after she had taken off like that, so obviously emotional.

She looked at the long highway road leading back toward the Ribbon and River King turf beyond that. She had made the walk once or twice before, but never in cold like this. It would take her an hour and a half to get home and the thought of that walk and most likely being sick for a week afterward as a result was still more appealing than going back and finding a lift home, so when she pulled herself to her feet, parts of her skirt and stockings damp from where she had sat on them, she turned toward the Ribbon and started walking.

 _Sometimes I love you, sometimes it's you I can't stand_

 _Sometimes I wanna hug you, sometimes I wanna push you away_

 _Most times I wanna kiss you, other times punch you in the face_

"Get off my damn car," Tim scolded Curly as he made his way back to his car after sharing a friendly beer with the Tigers leader, Billy Prause, "how many times do I have to tell ya?"

They were on the Ribbon, and Pete and most of the gang were around the place, too, drinking beers taken from the trunk of Tim's car, bantering with one another or trying to charm their way into a backseat with one of the many girls milling about, and overall enjoying the general revelry that was the Friday night drag races.

Curly, who had been sitting on the front of Tim's car and looking out over the crowd of people on either sides of the main road, jumped down from the car with a daring grin on his face and a beer and burning cigarette in hand.

"Why ain't you tryin' to get up some girl's skirt like the rest of your buddies?" Tim asked as he leant against his car and pulled out his pack of cigarettes, glancing around and spotting Dale making out with his girl next to his own car and Glenn some way off talking to a brunette who looked to be around the high school seniors' age.

"I can't enjoy the company of my own brother?" Curly asked, his words slurred just enough for Tim to figure the beer in his hand wasn't his first.

"I can't see how my company's better than a bird's," Tim said with a shrug before lighting a cigarette and taking a draw.

"I can't be bothered puttin' the effort in tonight," Curly responded, bringing his cigarette to his lips and imitating Tim, who watched him somewhat bemused.

Curly had about a fifty-fifty success rate with girls. He was good looking enough, which Tim attributed to Curly looking more and more like him with each year he grew, but surely his stupidity knocked him down a few pegs in some girls' eyes. Still, it wasn't like Curly to be separate from everybody else, he was normally talking with one of the guys at least.

Tim was about to ask him what the problem was, because he was sure that there was something problematic swimming in that thick skull of his brother's, when he caught a glimpse of Jodie's face passing under a streetlight through a break in the crowd. She was swallowed up a moment later, but not before Tim was able to take in the shoes in her hand and her feet covered only by her stockings. Tim was still cold despite his jeans, boots and jacket, and yet Jodie was walking barefoot in a skirt and jacket.

Tim cussed under his breath as he flicked his cigarette away. He swore the girl only had half a damn brain. She could've been good competition for Curly and the stupid shit he did sometimes.

"I'll be back," Tim told his brother before heading into the crowd.

He followed in the direction he had seen Jodie walking in and found her soon enough, walking along the Ribbon ahead of him with her head down, avoiding the looks of those she passed. He jogged after her until he managed to catch her arm and stop her. She stopped for a second, saw it was him, and then pulled her arm out of his grip and continued on.

"Ain't you freezin'?" Tim asked as he followed along the Ribbon beside her.

"Leave me alone, Tim," she told him, fatigue in her tone, "the last thing I need right now is people seein' me with _you_."

"No, the last thing you need is to catch your death out here," Tim grinned at her, though she refused to look at him and see it. "You gotta be about as dumb as my brother to be walkin' around barefoot like that."

"I'm really not in the mood for this."

Tim quirked an eyebrow at her, "It ain't like I'm tryin' to bed you, it's not so hard to have a conversation with someone."

"I'm not in the mood to have a conversation with you," Jodie clarified, stopping a moment to face him and tell him slowly and seriously, "leave me alone."

Her lips were blue and her face so pale she could have been mistaken for one of the snowflakes that had been falling from the sky earlier that week. A couple of dark smudges ran from her eyes down over her cheeks to her chin and the wisecrack Tim had been about to offer up next disappeared in his throat.

"You're headed home, right?" he asked her, sure his assumption was correct. She didn't look to be in the mood to watch the races. "Let me take you."

Jodie scoffed at him before continuing her walk along the Ribbon. "There's no way in hell I'm gettin' in a car with you," she said as Tim followed after her. When she finished her sentence he heard her teeth clicking together in her mouth.

"You're really gonna walk another forty-five minutes home?" Tim asked dubiously, but when Jodie gave him a stubborn look as if to say that was exactly what she was going to do he rolled his eyes and stepped in front of her to cut her off, forcing her to stop and look at him. "You keep walkin' until you're further up and away from most everyone. I'll go get my car and pick you up."

"Are you slow?" she asked him poisonously, before repeating herself. "I ain't gettin' in a car with you."

"Well I guess I'm gonna piss you off the whole walk home," he said before taking off back toward where he had come from.

Jodie hugged her arms against her chest and continued walking, hardly feeling the freezing temperature anymore, numbed to it by now. Ten minutes later she was away from most everybody, the crowds of people behind her as she walked further into the dark, the sidewalk only illuminated here and there by streetlamps and the occasional headlights from passing cars. Jodie glanced up at every car that passed her by, though she doubted Tim would actually come back for her. She didn't want him to anyway. She had made it this far, she could continue on until she got home.

And then headlights lit up the sidewalk before her from behind, and she heard a car slow down to a crawl beside her.

"Get in," she heard Tim tell her through the open window of the passenger door.

Jodie stopped walking, incredulous and exasperated and so overwhelmingly tired. He told her to get in again and she leant down to look into the car, into his face dark with shadows.

"Nobody's gonna see you, just get in or you'll turn to ice before you get home."

She glanced up and down the street, deliberating, and when she was satisfied that he was indeed right – about nobody seeing her and about freezing – she opened his passenger door and climbed in.

"Put the window up," he told her as he fiddled around with the heat. She did as she was told, her arms stiff and her fingers stinging as she did so.

They pulled away from the curb in silence as Jodie inwardly berated herself for winding up in a situation with Tim, again. Even if nobody would find out about it unless she told them, or he did. And it dawned on her in then that this could be Tim's way of antagonizing Rick some more, baiting him for the next problem, the next fight.

"You could've just let me walk," she said to him once her body's shivering passed and her skin started to prickle with warmth.

"You looked like you needed a ride."

"Why would _you_ help me, though?" she asked, her brows creasing in confusion. "You weren't exactly nice when I saw you last."

"You tellin' Rick we spoke almost got me stabbed," Tim responded with a shrug, "I was still pissed."

"And now you're not?"

"Oh, I am," he answered, glancing at her as he drove, "but not at you. Thomas didn't have to overreact like that."

Jodie nodded slowly in agreeance. "You know he'll overreact worse if he finds out you're drivin' me home."

"Word has it you ain't his girl anymore."

Jodie let out a small, bitter laugh before saying, "He's probably just waitin' for me to run back to you. It doesn't matter what I do, it's never the right thing to him." She looked down at her hands in her lap, willing herself not to cry again, not in front of Tim, and added, "I can't win."

Silence fell between them for a few minutes. Tim looked over at her as he slowed to a stop for a red traffic light. She was resting her head against the window now, staring out at the dark, cloudy sky, some colour starting to show in her cheeks again.

"You were comin' from Buck's?" he asked, looking her clothing over. She was certainly dressed for Buck's.

"Yeah," she answered, lifting her head away from the glass, "George and Troy dragged me there, and then Rick showed up and I just had to leave."

"You couldn't get a ride from anyone?"

"I didn't ask."

Tim snorted, wondering why he was even surprised. "You ain't that bright, anyone ever told you that?"

"You," she answered snarkily, "several times."

"At least you got looks," Tim said offhandedly, like it was just fact and not a subtle attempt at getting under her skin.

"You want to get back at Rick, don't you?" she asked him, her suspicion rising as the traffic light turned green and Tim hit the gas.

"Nah, I want him to back off," Tim said with a candid sigh.

"And drivin' his girl," Jodie began before correcting herself, "his ex, home is going to make him back off… how?"

"He's not gonna know about this," Tim told her, "unless you open your big mouth again."

"So you're just drivin' me home out of the kindness of your heart."

"Ain't nothin' kind about my heart," Tim said with a smirk, "I don't do shit for free."

"You want me to pay for your gas?" she asked, her words coming out slowly and unsurely.

"I wanna know where he's gettin' the drugs," Tim responded. He had a good idea of who Rick was getting them off anyway, but she didn't know that, and he wouldn't let her know that in actuality it was her who was under his skin, who had always been under there.

"I don't know what you're talkin' about," she replied quickly, dropping his gaze and looking back out through the window.

"C'mon, you ain't that dumb," he said, and when she didn't respond he continued with, "I know things fucked up real quick when he lost Mike," he paused momentarily when a pained expression crossed her face, "but he wouldn't be actin' so nuts if he weren't on what he's on."

"You'll just make it worse," she said as Tim turned onto Jodie's street and slowed down as he approached her house.

When he came to a stop on the side of the street outside her home, he turned in his seat to face her properly and said, "You'd be helpin' the both of us. We want the same thing, King. You want him to go back to normal and I wanna keep my boys and my land safe. If I have to cut his supply off, I'll cut it, and we'll all be better off for it."

"Trust me, you don't want to aggravate him any more," she said, a hand gripping her door handle and her heart singing at the welcome sight of her home just a few steps away.

"How the hell am I supposed to stop any of this then?"

"I don't know," Jodie said with a frown, "I don't know if you can."

 _'Cause every minute you start switching up_

 _And you say things like you don't give a fuck_

 _Then I say I'm through with you, take my heart from you_


	7. Heathens

**Author's Note:** Sorry, again, for yet another long wait between chapters. The excuse this time is I found out I was pregnant shortly after posting the last chapter, and have been dealing with the usual first trimester symptoms this whole time, which hasn't left much room for writing. I never forget about these stories though, they're always floating around in my mind somewhere!

This chapter correlates with the time-frame from chapter nine and ten of Ticket to Ride, though nothing really interweaves in this chapter.

Please be aware that all familiar characters and locations belong to S.E. Hinton and her book, The Outsiders. The chapter title and lyrics throughout are from Twenty One Pilots' song, Heathens. And the title of this fic comes from the song of the same name by The Beatles.

* * *

 _ **Thursday, 30 January 1969**_

 _All my friends are heathens, take it slow_

 _Wait for them to ask you who you know_

 _Please don't make any sudden moves_

 _You don't know the half of the abuse_

"So, are you and the Brumly girl done with your lover's tiff yet?" Tim asked Curly as he drove his younger brother and sister home from school.

"What?!" Angela exclaimed from the backseat, eyebrows reaching up into her hairline at the new piece of gossip. "Katie Thomas? With Curly?"

"Fuck you, man," Curly growled at Tim before looking into the backseat of Tim's car and telling Angela, "He's talkin' shit." Angela gave Curly a skeptical look before Curly turned back to Tim in the front seat beside him. After a few moments of contemplation he told Tim, "She hangs around sometimes when Susan's with us."

"Does her brother know?" Angela teased, glancing between her two older brothers.

"No, and you keep your mouth shut about it," Curly snapped at her again, "it ain't your business to go tellin' the world and makin' it out to be somethin' it ain't."

"What's said between us stays with us," Tim said, looking at her in the rear-view mirror when she opened her mouth to respond to Curly. "What is it, exactly?"

"I don't know," Curly said with an aggravated shrug of his shoulders. "It ain't anything. Her buddies from Brumly are gone most of the time, so she hangs off of Susan, who's always with Dale these days."

"So y'all are friends?"

"She seems to like me less than the rest," Curly responded, crossing his arms over his chest with a dark look on his face, "Might have somethin' to do with my brother supposedly causin' this whole mess with her brother."

"Rick's boys have been downtown more and more lately."

"Well I guess that explains why they're not at school then," Curly said, a slight sigh of relief escaping his mouth with his words.

Tim left Curly alone the rest of the drive home from the school, the definite scorn of a love unrequited plastered on his younger brother's face as he glared out the window. Tim didn't know the specifics, but he could tell that something was going on with Curly and from his failure at nonchalance when Katie was mentioned; Tim was willing to bet that the _something_ going on with Curly was _Katie_. Tim chose not to make his knowledge of whatever was happening between the two star-crossed lovers known, though, for fear that Curly might guess his true motives for encouraging the situation. He couldn't help thinking the rest of the way home that it would mean more power and support to Tim if the sister of Rick Thomas were to go against Brumly and side with the Shepard Gang. And it would eliminate the need to get Jodie King into bed purely to one-up Rick, something Tim wasn't keen on. He knew Jodie. He didn't know Katie. He couldn't lure Jodie into bed with him to one-up Rick, as Pete had suggested last week, knowing that there was a possibility she could be hurt any more by Rick than she already had been.

 _You'll never know the psychopath sitting next to you_

 _You'll never know the murderer sitting next to you_

 _You'll think, how'd I get here sitting next to you_

 _But after all I've said, please don't forget_

Jodie had been wondering all week when she would see Tim again, not doubting for a moment that he would seek her out again soon with the hope that she had changed her mind about giving him what little information she knew about Rick and the dealings of his gang. So when Tim sauntered into the salon fifteen minutes before it was due to close, Jodie wasn't the slightest bit surprised.

"You need a haircut?" Linda asked from where she stood at the front desk, checking over the appointments booked for the next week.

"No," Jodie interrupted croakily before Tim could respond, "he's here for me," she said as she stored her combs away neatly at her workstation and lifted her forearm up to her mouth as she coughed. The walk from Bucks to the Ribbon last weekend had been just another dumb idea on her growing list.

Tim shot Linda a charming smile, his eyes lingering on her almost eight month swollen stomach for a moment, before walking further into the salon and coming to a stop by Jodie's workstation, leaning against a set of drawers holding more curlers than Jodie could count.

"What do you want?" she asked, looking up at Tim as he grinned down at her.

"I can't stop by and tell you how good you're lookin' today?" he teased and she rolled her eyes at him. She had certainly seen better days, Tim conceded as he took in her paler than normal skin and the way she kept sniffling, but he'd be damned if there wasn't something about her curly, brown hair and the look she always gave him that didn't make him hungry for anything he could get from her.

"Every time you tell me that, I wind up in trouble," she told him, unimpressed, remembering each and every thing Tim's managed to get from her with his rare compliments. "What's it gonna be this time?"

"I was thinkin' of throwing a party tomorrow night," Tim told her as he watched her continue packing her things away, "and since your pile of invitations is smaller these days thanks to you wanting to avoid Thomas, I thought you might want to get out and go somewhere you know he won't be."

"Too many people," she said distractedly as she wound up the cord of a hairdryer, "there's no way word won't get back to him that I'm partying with Shepards."

"You're a girl, ain't you?" Tim asked, "And you ain't his. You can do whatever you want."

"In a perfect world, maybe, but not this one," she said, giving Tim a pained look. "We might not be together anymore, but that doesn't mean I'm gonna do something to blatantly hurt him."

She supposed people like her brothers and Tim would consider her compassion a character flaw, but despite how much he had hurt her and how angry he had made her throughout their relationship and in the last month or two particularly, she wouldn't be the person to add to how much he was suffering.

"So do somethin' to help him then." Jodie stopped midway through picking hair out of a hairbrush and looked at Tim. "Forget the party. Tell me what you know about Brumly and I'll shut them down."

"How on earth is that supposed to help him?" Jodie asked, though she knew where Tim's logic was coming from. He had said enough last Friday night when he had saved her from the cold and driven her home for her to know that he believed Rick's gang, and particularly the gang's business, was causing Rick's instability. It made sense, though she still wasn't sure things would work out the way Tim saw them working out in his head.

Tim glanced back at Linda, still sitting at the front desk and not paying any attention to their conversation, before telling Jodie quietly, "That shit ruins people, and it ruins their gangs."

Tim had seen it happen with a downtown gang he had done work with a couple of years ago. It was why he wouldn't even give his boys the tiniest bit of dope to sell and chose to stick to lifting car parts and other various goods. It had done them well in the past and was the reason the gang was still going strong while others had already fell into chaos.

"What do you think he's gonna do when you take away his drugs," Jodie hissed at Tim, leaning in close to him so they definitely wouldn't be overheard, "and then his gang? When he has nothing left to lose?"

"He'll stop pushing away the only thing he has left," Tim said, looking her up and down. "You."

Jodie held his stare for a few moments, an agreement lying unspoken between them that when everything came to an end and the smoke cleared she would still be standing by Rick's side.

"Can you give me a ride home?" Jodie asked Tim, glancing out the front of the salon at where Tim's car was parked on the side of the street. Troy had taken the day off to drive with George to Alabama, where George knew a guy who knew a guy he'd been in prison with a few years back and was going to get him a good deal on firearms, leaving Jodie without a lift home from work today. And she wanted to continue this conversation away from where Linda might hear them, not wanting her manager to know any more than she already did about the delinquent life she lived because of those around her.

"Sure," Tim answered before Jodie turned to Linda and told her she was going to head home.

Linda waved the two of them out the door and when they were both in Tim's car and cruising down one of the main downtown streets, Jodie told him, "This can only go one of two ways. Rick could be defeated, and from that defeat he could learn a good lesson about dealing with his problems in a more level-headed way. Or he could be so incensed that you've done everything you can to ruin him that there'll be nothing stopping him from comin' after you."

"That sounds a bit like it is now," Tim snorted.

"This ain't a game, Tim," Jodie said seriously, her body shaking slightly with the intensity of it.

"I know it ain't," Tim groaned at her, "but the way I see it is he and his gang are gonna end up tryin' to kill me or mine soon enough anyway. If we take away the people who would do his bidding for him and the drugs that are drivin' him mad right now, then we might all have a chance of this bullshit mess ending without another dead body."

"How're you gonna take away his boys? They're not gonna leave him just because the supply's been cut off. They've made money other ways before, and then they'll come after you for screwing with their supply."

"I might have somethin' in the works with his boys. And if I don't, then they'll still be off it and thinking clear enough to see that this war ain't helpin' anybody. Nobody needs to know we're behind the supply cut off."

The more he spoke the more Jodie felt like she didn't have any other option. He was right. The crap that Rick was selling was affecting him in a way that he wouldn't see reason until it was out of his system. They could either wait for Rick to destroy them all, himself included, or they could do something to change the course of that path. Everything Jodie had done to help Rick since Mike's death had gone wrong and backfired on her, and chances were the same thing would happen to this new attempt, but she would try it anyway. One more time, she thought to herself, she would try for him one more time. If it didn't work, she would walk away for good and he would never know of her involvement. But if it did work... Her eyes glistened at the possibility of Rick normal again. "The Devilhawks have a warehouse downtown. I don't know where they keep the stuff normally, but Rick's boys have always picked it up from there."

"Where downtown?"

Jodie sniffed back her tears, frustrated that they always seemed to come when she was with Tim. "I don't know. I might be able to find out from Troy or George, but I'll need time." They wouldn't be back until the end of the weekend, and managing to get the information from her brothers without explaining why she wanted it would be tricky.

Tim nodded, satisfied, and turned the conversation elsewhere. "So it's still a no to the party?" he asked, giving Jodie a sideways glance as she tried to inconspicuously wipe her right cheek.

Jodie let out a short laugh, a smile on her face for a couple of moments before sniffing again and lightly punching Tim in the shoulder, "I think it's probably best if I stay away from hoods for a while."

Tim grinned back at her, despite his doubt that she would be able to stick to that idea.

 _We don't deal with outsiders very well_

 _They say newcomers have a certain smell_

 _You have trust issues, not to mention_

 _They say they can smell your intentions_

Jodie followed through on her word and stayed home on Friday night, watching a bit of TV with her dad before he needed to leave for his next truck drive interstate, eating leftover pasta for dinner and then proceeding to throw the pasta up when she thought too long on what her brothers might be up to at that moment. She continued to feel nauseous throughout the course of the rest of the weekend, and was relieved when George and Troy finally arrived home late on Sunday night.

The gun run had gone well without any problems, and Jodie was relieved enough to see them unharmed that she left asking them about the Devilhawks warehouse for another time. She still hadn't worked out a way to get the location out of her brothers without raising any suspicion, and the more she thought on it the more she convinced herself it would be impossible. They would never tell her if she told them the real reason she wanted to know because they'd just think she was interfering and making another stupid decision. And maybe she was. No, she was almost certain that she was.

If she couldn't find out the location of the warehouse, though, then Tim would be on his own, which Jodie thought might not be such a bad thing. She didn't want to be involved in this, not if there was a chance Rick would find out, and nothing ever stayed secret for long in the circles they all ran in.

Jodie spent most of the week after Troy & George came home curled up in her bed, coughing her lungs up and sneezing her brains and other questionable boogers out. She had called the salon on Monday morning to let Linda know her cold was now too much for her to handle at work. Linda understood, of course, because she had listened to Jodie's cold get progressively worse throughout the previous week, but Jodie still felt bad leaving Linda to pick up the slack when she was so heavily pregnant. But the rest was exactly what Jodie needed, and she was able to return to work by Thursday and had two full days of clients Linda had had to reschedule earlier in the week to keep her busy before the weekend arrived.

Still not feeling a hundred percent, Jodie watched her brothers leave to go to Jay's and to the Ribbon and to parties she had been invited to, but didn't feel like going to over the weekend and instead chose to lay on the couch in her cold, empty house. By Sunday morning, she was well and truly cured of her cold and sick of lying in her bed or on her couch watching TV and reading books. So when George and Troy traipsed downstairs, dressed and ready to go somewhere, and into the lounge room where Jodie lazed in an armchair she was desperate to tag along wherever they were going just for a bit of sunshine on her face and fresh air in her nostrils.

"You can't come," George told her when she opened her mouth to ask, and she glared at him in response, jumping out of her armchair to face him head on with hands on hips.

"And why not?" she asked, glancing at Troy. "Where're y'all headed?"

"Not anywhere you wanna be," George answered, picking his car keys up off the coffee table.

"Come on," Jodie whined, "I've been cooped up in here for longer than I remember. I don't even remember what the outside world looks like," she added for dramatic effect that had Troy chuckling and George rolling his eyes, but grinning at her theatrics nonetheless.

"If it were somethin' social then sure, but this one's business," George responded, "sorry, kid."

Jodie groaned, "You could've just said that to begin with," she said. "What business is it?"

"Pickin' up the rest of our money from the Hawks," Troy answered for George as he snatched up his jacket from the couch and shrugged it on.

Maybe little sisters like Angela Shepard and Katie Thomas didn't know much about their brothers' gang business, either because they didn't want to or because their brothers didn't want to share that kind of information with them, but there had never been any deception between Jodie, Troy and George. Family just didn't betray one another, and that made her feel that much guiltier about the idea that was forming in her mind as she casually sat back down in her armchair and asked, "What do they owe money for?"

"The rest of the guns we dropped off on Sunday night. They paid for most of 'em then and the rest now they've made their own money off 'em."

"Be safe," Jodie told them as they walked out the front door.

She stayed seated and listened for George's engine gunning to life before reaching forward and grabbing Troy's car keys from the coffee table where they had been with George's. She watched from the corner of the front window as George backed out of the driveway and took off down their street before dashing out the front door after them and climbing into Troy's car where it was parked on the verge of the sidewalk. She gave no second thought to the daggy, old house clothes she wore as she turned the key in the ignition, watched George turn right out of their street, and then pulled Troy's car away from the sidewalk to follow after them.

 _Why'd you come? You knew you should have stayed_

 _I tried to warn you just to stay away_

 _And now they're outside ready to bust_

 _It looks like you might be one of us_


End file.
